


If Anyone Falls

by sinistercinnamon



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Thor (Movies)
Genre: (possibly), Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, BAMF Jane, BAMF Loki, Darcy totally ships it, Erik is not a Happy Bunny, F/M, Jötunn Loki, Loki Does What He Wants, Loki Feels, Loki Needs a Hug, Loki Redemption, PTSD, So much denial, Truth Serum, lokane - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-30
Updated: 2014-08-23
Packaged: 2018-01-10 14:05:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 10
Words: 45,270
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1160564
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sinistercinnamon/pseuds/sinistercinnamon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Thor's mad quest to Svartalfheim will be perilous & casualties are to be expected from such a gamble. It would provide Loki the perfect opportunity to escape. But things do not go according to plan, & suddenly the fate of the Nine Realms rests on his shoulders. Will he stand & fight, or laugh as worlds burn?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Based on prompt no.29 on the [Lokane Fanfic Prompts tumblr](http://magic-n-science-prompts.tumblr.com/). This isn't 100% finished, but I have most of it in rough draft form, with an idea of where it's going to go, & if I don't get on with posting it now I'll forever be procrastinating on working on it. So here you go - enjoy (hopefully)!
> 
> Title taken from a Stevie Nicks song.

Loki was enjoying himself immensely. The opportunity to hurt his oaf of a brother had been satisfying indeed, even if it had been an act to fool Malekith. Mostly an act anyway. He had actually stabbed Thor, rather than merely using an illusory dagger, as had been planned. Simply because he wasn’t convinced of Thor’s acting ability. No other reason whatsoever, and any who asked would be told as such. Loki might even attempt to keep a straight face as he explained.

And now these Dark Elves were providing a target for his rage. So much so that he’d forgotten his intention to use them as a means to fake his own death and thus escape Asgard’s idea of justice until he stood alone surrounded by their corpses. Then again it would be embarrassing to fall to such an enemy. If you have the opportunity to arrange the circumstances of your demise, then you should at least meet a worthy end. Being beaten to death by a small Midgardian child using a stuffed animal would be less humiliating.

Looking around, he saw Thor still fighting the Kursed and not seeming to be doing too well. Excellent. He could kill the creature and then either ‘die’ of a wound apparently sustained in the attempt, or taunt his brother into such a rage that he did the deed. It would mean forgoing vengeance on Malekith, but he might not have another opportunity like this, and at least he could have vengeance on one of his mother’s murderers – let Thor have the other!

Jane was nowhere to be seen. Good. She had the intelligence to realise she would only be in the way in the midst of a battle. He wasn’t sure why he had pushed her out of the way of that blast, almost at the cost of his own life. Protecting her while Thor destroyed the Aether cost him nothing and not doing so might have distracted his brother at a critical moment. But she serves no further purpose on this quest and he could quite easily have claimed his failure to help her to be a tragic error made in the heat of battle should his brother question his action. She was spirited, it was true, and had coped with the Aether remarkably well for one of her kind, but she was mortal and therefore beneath him, and he should not be wasting effort on her.

Trying to push all thoughts of her from his mind, he surveyed the bodies at his feet. Much as he was contemptuous of the Dark Elves’ fighting prowess, there was no denying that they possessed some formidable weapons. He searched the bodies and relieved them of the disintegration bombs they carried. Those could prove useful. They would hopefully be effective in dealing with this monstrosity, and may provide a means of escape should all else fail and he finds himself taken back to Asgard. And at least using them wouldn’t show the monster that he really was for all to see, as the Casket of Ancient Winters did. Or twist his mind as had the sceptre.

He suppressed a shudder and, picking up one of the Elven weapons nearby, started over the barren ground towards the fight, cloaking himself in invisibility as he did so. It wouldn’t do for him to be spotted. The element of surprise was a useful advantage, and he needed any that he could get. Not unless he wanted his death to be more authentic than he would wish.

It appeared he’d arrived just in time. Thor was lying beaten on the ground, unable to do anything more than attempt to dodge the blows as well as he could. Grinning, he ran the creature through with the Elven weapon. At the very least, this should impair it enough that the two of them should be able to finish it off. Indeed, even call Jane out from where she had rather astutely hidden herself and allow her to...

Slowly it turned around to face him, not even remotely affected by the blade that had run it through. How? He had missed the heart, but surely he had hit a lung! Something! He didn’t have the chance to dodge away as he was pulled into a grotesque hug. Dimly he heard Thor howling. Trying to block out the intense agony, he took the opportunity offered, palming one of the bombs, activating it and placing it on the creature’s side. By Yggdrasil, that _had_ to do it!

He was thrown to the ground, groaning. Fighting against the pain, he glared up at the creature. _We’ll see who is the victor here!_ He opened his mouth to sneer at the creature, determined to have the last word, and wanting it to have a moment of panicked realisation of its imminent demise.

“See you in-“

Suddenly, there was a roar, and Thor threw himself at the creature. _No!_ What the idiot expected to achieve was anybody’s guess, as not only could the monster swat him away as one would an fly, but now had a large blade jutting from its torso, and he didn’t even have Mjolnir in his hand. And that was ignoring the obvious presence of the device that Loki had planted on the creature right in front of him! Even Thor couldn’t be so blind as to miss that! Loki raised a hand and tried to shout a warning, even though he knew it was futile – even if Thor noticed he would never be able to get clear in time. There was no way of saving him from the fate that he had saved Loki from only minutes previously.

He could only watch as the bomb detonated, imploding with a flash of light and pulling in the creature, Thor, and the dirt beneath them. His brother let out an agonised scream that was all too quickly cut off, and then there was nothing. Nothing but silence and a small crater where they had stood. Mjolnir, summoned by its owner, thudded into the ashy ground, a few seconds and a lifetime too late.

That... was not supposed to happen. It couldn’t have happened. Thor wasn’t supposed to die. He had thrown himself headlong into battle against impossible odds, and time and time again emerged alive and often unscathed, laughing from the thrill of battle and in delight at his triumph. Even when he himself had actually killed Thor, when he sent the Destroyer, his brother had got straight back up again and reduced a supposedly undefeatable foe to pieces. (A part of him had been relieved – he’d only meant to incapacitate his brother, prevent him returning to Asgard at least until he’d succeeded in his plan to prove himself a worthy son, and struck out in a fit of anger, enraged at Thor desperately apologising without knowing what he was apologising for, forgetting how fragile mortal bodies were.)

It had become such a constant, that even while Loki despaired at Thor yet again throwing strategy and caution to the wind, he had never actually expected him to fail. It was like a nightmare that seemed threatening at the time, but as soon as dawn broke became a laughable fancy that could never come to pass. Even while fighting him, he’d somehow never expected to win, just... not lose. He’d wanted him out of the way, yet a universe without Thor was unthinkable.

Yet it had happened. Dawn had broken but the nightmare would not fade away.

That was not supposed to happen.


	2. Chapter 2

Another shout, and another figure hurtling across the landscape. The mortal, emerging from whatever shelter she had taken during the battle, drawn to where her erstwhile lover had met his end. She skidded to a stop by the crater, staring horrified at the spot, her hands twitching as if she urged to reach out but feared the very air was tainted. Slowly she turned towards him, and seemed about to say something, until her eyes focused on him properly, and the empty horror in her eyes was replaced by concern.

“Shit? Are you alright? No, forget I said that – of course you’re not alright!” She dropped to her knees in the dirt beside him, her hands fluttering over where he had his hands pressed against his wound. “Oh god, please don’t die! I can’t- What am I supposed to do? Do you have one of those healing stone things?”

“Regrettably not,” he mumbled.

Now was the moment. He could ‘die’, wait until she had left, heal his wounds and escape and... then what? He’d had plans, but he couldn’t clearly remember them now. His thoughts seemed disjointed. He wasn’t sure if it was from the pain, or blood loss, or grief, or all of those things. 

Where would he go? With Malekith free and in possession of the Aether, where would be safe? Would _anywhere_ be safe? And what was the point of faking his own death if no witnesses survived to report it? Without him, Jane would be stranded here and probably perish soon after in this unforgiving wasteland, unable even to warn anybody of the threat. For some reason the thought of that bothered him. And someone still needed to stop Malekith and avenge Frigga’s death – who else was there now that Thor was dead?

He would live. For now.

He was actually surprised that he hadn’t bled to death yet. It seemed like years had passed, but it was barely a minute at best.

He took a deep breath. “I can... heal myself. It will take time though, and use up a considerable amount of my magic.”

“Really? Oh that’s good!” Jane sagged with relief. “Well, as long as it works. And your magic will come back, right?”

“Yes, now let me concentrate, lest I die and leave you stranded here.” He allowed his eyes to fall closed, focusing his attention on the stab wound.

“Wha? Oh, yeah. Good point.”

He nearly lost his concentration, eyes opening and looking up at her in confusion. “Then why else concern yourself with me?”

“Uh, because you’re injured? And because I’m not a heartless bitch who’ll leave someone to die? Besides, you saved my life back there. You saved Thor’s life. Or tried to.” For a moment she looked like she was about to cry. “You’re a bit of a dick, and you’ve killed a lot of people, but that’s no reason to leave you.”

He wasn’t sure how to respond to this. She must surely be lying, but he could detect no trace of insincerity in her voice or expression. Closing his eyes again he redoubled his efforts, until her voice again broke the silence.

“I hate to interrupt, but... what’s that?”

Annoyed, he opened his eyes once more and was about to express his frustration at her distraction, when he followed her gaze and saw the dark shadow on the horizon. Not good.

He struggled to his feet. “That will have to do for the time being. That is a dust storm heading towards us, and it would be a good idea to find shelter before it hits.”

“There’s some pretty rocky hills over there. Maybe we can duck between the rocks or something?”

He nodded, too busy attempting to stand to form a verbal response. She helped him up, supporting him as he staggered trying to catch his balance. There was a surprising amount of strength in her for one so small, and he couldn’t help but admire that. Still, she was lucky he had managed to at least repair himself enough to move. She would have no chance of aiding him without some contribution from himself.

Then the edge of the storm reached them as they reached the ridge they had been heading for, and their partnership became of a more even split, as the winds battered against her and she required his support as much as he required hers. They were in luck – a promising-looking crevasse glimpsed through the sand blowing in their faces proved to be a cave more than deep enough to shelter them from the dust storm. The moment they stepped into shelter was a relief, and they sank down onto some rocks as soon as they felt they were far enough from the entrance to be safe.

The walk to the cave was enough to undo most of the careful work he had managed to do to patch up his wound. At this rate he would drain himself utterly before he was even able to prevent himself from bleeding to death. He winced, which attracted the attention of Jane, who began tearing at her dress.

He raised an eyebrow. “While I will not deny that you’re attractive, I don’t think this is the time or place, and I’m afraid I am not good for such activities in my current condition.”

“What?” She paused, confused, then comprehension dawned. “Ugh, men! You all have one track minds! It’s your ‘current condition’ I’m thinking of here. Thanks for the compliment I guess, though.” She seemed outwardly calm, but her hands shook slightly as she tore off a large strip of fabric and folded it up into a pad, handing it to him. “Here, put that over the wound. Yes, I know you’re doing fancy healing magic but it seems to be slow going and it’d be nice if you didn’t bleed to death in the meantime. And who knows if something else won’t happen and we need to move again? What if something attacks us?” she pointed out, tearing more fabric off the dress.

“Such as what? We are sheltered in here, and nothing lives on this world.” He leaned forward slightly to allow her to place the other improvised pad over the exit wound on his back, and wrap a longer strip around his body to hold both in place.

She snorted and rolled her eyes, hands busy trying the strip in place. “Yeah and your dad said all the Dark Elves were dead and the Aether was destroyed. If it’s all the same to everyone else I’m gonna ignore all the official information about this stuff and assume there’s danger everywhere.”

“He is NOT my father!” he snarled, immediately regretting it for the flash of memory of the last time he had ever seen his mother.

“OK sorry! Look, all I know is Thor-" she stopped suddenly, frozen for a moment, then took a deep breath, blinking back tears. She continued, her voice only slightly shaking, "Thor said you’re - were his brother! I didn’t exactly get the detailed family history or anything! Honestly I’d probably deny any connection to him too. I mean, he called me a goat and had me locked up because I’m basically a weapon.”

“Yes, he rather has a habit of that.”

“How’s the healing going?”

“Slowly. It’s complex work, and quite draining.”

“Well it’s not like we’re going anywhere until this storm passes. And then I suppose I try to find a way back to Earth. I don’t suppose you’d know if there were any of those doorways of yours nearby?”

“I do not believe there are any secret ways to Midgard anywhere near here, I am afraid. If the storm does not last too long, & the boat is still operational after the battering it has taken from us and the weather, then we may be able to make it, but...” He shrugged, & regretted the movement as it pulled at his injury.

She gave a cry of frustration, pushing herself up from the rock on which she sat, and pacing to and fro across the cave. “Ahhhh, I just feel so useless here! I need to warn them, somehow! I saw him - Malekith! He’s going to unleash the Aether. Not just on Asgard, but everywhere.” She ceased pacing and collapsed back against the wall.

He frowned. “How?”

“I saw him on Earth! Why would he go to Earth?”

Loki thought for a moment. “The Convergence will allow him to attack all the realms at once. And Midgard provides an ideal base to attack from.”

“Oh god. None of this would have happened if I hadn’t found the Aether. People have died because I had to go poking around.” She cast a glance out towards the cave entrance, before looking down at the floor, defeated.

“If you had not stumbled across it, likely he would have found it himself all the sooner. He is able to sense its power and would have gone straight to it as soon as he emerged from wherever he has been hiding for the last 5000 years. You led him a merry chase across the realms and have at least prevented him from staging any previews of his planned destruction of the universe as we know it.”

She sighed, sinking down the wall onto the rock next to him once more. The silence was suddenly broken by the most obnoxious noise Loki had heard in his life. And for someone who’d heard Tony Stark speak, that was saying something. “What in the realms is that racket?”

Jane reached into one of the pockets of her coat and pulled out an item that Loki recognised as a phone, pressing something on it.

“Hello... Richard?! Where are you?” She looked at Loki as if he could tell her how she was able to communicate with someone who was – presumably – on Midgard. But he could give her no answers, as he didn’t know how such devices worked in the first place, let alone how one could deliver a message across the realms.

“This is amazing!” She pulled the phone away from her ear, holding it in front of her and peering at the screen. A tinny voice issued from it. “Is it? I really enjoyed our lunch. Despite not actually ordering anything.”

Loki raised an eyebrow at this. Well well well. Was another man attempting to compete with Thor for her hand? He almost snorted with derision, then it occurred to him that now there was no competition, and he felt a pang of sadness. It wasn’t as if he had forgotten Thor’s death, but it was so hard to imagine a world without him that he had to keep reminding himself that the universe was fundamentally different to how it should be.

“How am I getting service here?” she asked, apparently to herself, as he doubted ‘Richard’ had any more idea than he did.

“Is this a bad time? Do you want me to call you back?”

“Nonononono!” Jane protested. “Whatever you do, do not hang up the phone!” Suddenly she exclaimed in surprise and reached down to pick something up off the ground which looked like a cluster of miscellaneous items, but she reacted to as if she’d found a great treasure.

Oblivious, ‘Richard’ continued on. “OK then! I was wondering if we could try again. Maybe have dinner sometime...” He wondered if she would accept this offer, if they all survived this. For some reason he found this thought upsetting, though he couldn’t think why, as it wasn’t like it should matter to him. Realising his concentration was shattered, he abandoned his attempts to heal and settled for patching the wound for the time being.

However, Jane barely seemed to be listening. She beckoned to him, “Come on!” and marched deeper into the cave. Puzzled, he followed her, careful not to pull on his wound – there was only so much magic could do - and wondering where she was going. His puzzlement grew as he saw that whatever it was that Jane had picked up was far from the only item littering the cave floor. Including several shoes, for some reason. What- Then he noticed that all the items seemed to be Midgardian. Aha! He began to understand Jane’s excitement. The Convergence was said to cause some amount of blurring and thinning of the borders between realms, and it seemed they had fortuitously stumbled upon a point where they could cross from one realm to another, assuming it was still open.

Happily it was, and within a few paces they suddenly found themselves outside on what even in the dark was clearly recognisable as Midgard, stepping across an open, paved area towards a vehicle. It was hardly his favourite realm, but it was a considerable improvement on Svartalfheim, and infinitely preferable to Jotunheim.

The car had taken considerable damage from something, but this didn’t seem to put Jane off; she pulled the item she’d found in the cave out of her pocket, and reached for the door.

“Is this really suitable transport?”

“Do you see anything else around here? I for one am not walking home, and you should be resting or you’ll end up bleeding to death, magic or no magic. Besides my mom will kill me if she comes back to find I’ve ditched her car without even trying to find out if it can be repaired.”

He eyed the smashed windows. “What happened to this thing?”

“Erm, I did. OK, the Aether really.” She opened the door. “Oh.”

He looked down to see broken glass covering the seats. “Allow me, my lady. If you will stand aside a moment.”

She did so, and he waved a hand. The pieces of glass were pushed out of the car to fall on the ground, as if swept by an invisible brush.

“Wow, cool! Thanks!” She grinned up at him, then moved into the now-cleared seat, motioning him round to the other side.

“You are welcome.”

She looked at him when he got in. “Seatbelt!”

“What?”

She sighed and indicated the harness she was wearing. It reminded him of the one he’d been strapped into while in the Avengers’ quinjet. Looking at his own side of the car, he found a similar-looking strap hanging down. He pulled on it experimentally. “Why would I need this?”

“To stop you being hurled headfirst out of the car if I crash this thing?”

“Are you likely to crash?”

“I hit your brother twice his first day on this planet.”

He pulled the strap across and after examining it a few moments figured out how to clasp it.

“Good boy.” Only then did she do something with the item from the cave to the vehicle’s control panel, starting the engine and driving off.

“So who is Richard?”

“Really?” She shot him an exasperated look. “He was some guy I had lunch with. Or didn’t have lunch with. Never mind. You really don’t look so good. How is that healing going?” 

“Not well. It is hard to make any progress with constant interruptions and being on the move. For now I am settling for using my magic to patch the wound and block the flow of blood.”

“You were run through though. What about internal bleeding?”

“When I said I was patching up the wound, I meant all the way through.”

Her eyes widened as she understood his meaning. “You basically have a stick of magic going _right through you_ , holding your wound in place?!”

“Indeed. It is not perfect, but it will do until I have a chance to rest and work on healing myself properly.”

“OK, we’ll be there soon. I’d go faster, but I don’t want to be caught by the cops with Earth’s Most Wanted in my car.”

“I would offer to wear an illusion, but I must admit I cannot guarantee how well I can maintain it while trying to concentrate on keeping my insides inside.”

“Yeah. Probably best not to go using magic you don’t need to either.”

“That also.”

A few minutes later she pulls the car to the side of the road and shuts off the engine.

“Well here we are.”

Fumbling with his harness, he managed to unfasten it, and seeing Jane opening her door by pulling on a small lever, copied her action and was rewarded by his door swinging open. But when he tried to rise from the seat and step out onto the pavement, he found himself unable.

“Here, lemme help,” said Jane, reaching in to give him her hand. Beyond the point of caring that he was so reliant on a mortal, he allowed her to help him to his feet. Kicking the door closed after her, she helps him the few feet to the door.

“Not much point locking the car with the windows all smashed. That bloodstain you left on the seat will probably act as a pretty effective burglar deterrent.”

They make it inside, slowly navigating what felt to him like endless stairs, eventually stopping in front of a door, as Jane fumbled in her pocket for the keys.

“Well, here we go. Not sure how they’re gonna take this,” she says, opening the door.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am so so sorry for taking so long! Somehow, even though I had this chapter partially written & knew how I wanted it to go, it took ages to iron out & form into something readable. Didn't help that there was so much dialogue in this & none of the characters seemed to want to STFU. Although... the good thing about the long delay though is that it's meant I've been able to see Captain America: The Winter Soldier. Which means I have a better idea of the timeline. I'd been going on the assumption that TDW & TWS happened at roughly the same time (like Iron Man 2 & Thor) & that was why SHIELD was too distracted to listen to Erik & Darcy's warnings. However Agents of SHIELD has established that it definitely takes place after TDW, & while the show is bloody awful, it's still canon, & I like to stick as close to canon as I can without it clashing with the changes I have made, so it's good to have some idea of how things can be tied in & who/what can & can't be included because they're busy elsewhere. Don't worry! I won't be throwing any spoilers in this. Just maybe one or two references that you'd only spot after seeing the film. ;P
> 
> Advice: See Winter Soldier as soon as you can. If you normally wait a while to see films for some reason or other, make an exception. This film has so many repercussions for the Marvel universe & everything gets turned out its head. It'll be tricky for fanfic writers to even write a description for fics set after TWS without at least strongly implying spoilers, even if they're not specifically Cap focused, & even vague discussions about Avengers 2 will be a minefield.

“Jane! You can’t just leave like that! The whole world is going crazy – all the stuff we saw is spreading.” She seemed to notice them properly. “Did you go to a party? And who is that? Please tell me that’s not who I think it is...”

“Jane!” Erik came forward, and Jane froze. She should be glad he had turned up safe, and she definitely needed his expertise right now, but this was the worst possible situation for a reunion! Erik suddenly spotted who was leaning on her, gave a strangled gasp, and backed away shaking, sinking back into the chair he’d been sitting in.

“Oh yeah it’s totally who I think it is.”

“Uh, little help, someone? And can someone tell me why Erik isn’t wearing any pants?”

“He says it helps him think better,” explained Darcy’s intern (whatever his name was – Darcy had never actually introduced him), as they both jumped up to help her manoeuvre a barely-responsive Loki onto the couch. She grabbed a folded up blanket and draped it on the back in the hope of preventing it from meeting the same fate as the car seat. Now what? _Think, Jane!_

She turned to the unknown intern. “Could you get me a bowl of water, and a cloth? A glass of water would probably be a good idea too. Darcy, can you go to the medicine cabinet and get me, hell, get me anything that’s in there for cleaning and dressing a wound. “Erik-”

“I am not going to lift a finger to help him!”

“I wasn’t going to ask anything like that. I’m going to need everything you’ve got on the Convergence. All the work you’ve been doing on gravimetric anomalies, everything.” She sat down next to Loki, pulling at his clothing to get access to his wound. Healing or not, it’d be a good idea to get it cleaned and bandaged.

“Hey! Hey, come on, wake up!” She tapped his face. “Please don’t die! You need to focus on healing.”

From the corner came Erik’s voice, “Just let the bastard die.”

“He saved my life, and Thor’s. And trust me something even worse is coming and he wants to stop it just as much as I do. I know this can’t be easy for you after what you went through, but you need to trust me on this. Please!”

Loki groaned, his eyelids fluttering open. “I am not dead?”

“Nope. I refuse to let you.” She finally got to the last layer of his clothing, pulling the shirt over his head as carefully as she could manage, then carefully unwrapping the makeshift bandages she’d improvised in the cave. She almost fainted when she saw the wound. I knew it was bad, but fuck, how is he still alive? There was a subtle pale green glow emanating from it. Somewhere behind her she heard Darcy mutter, “Oh fuck!”

He chuckles, weakly. “Are you sure? There is an attractive woman stripping me of my clothes – surely this must be Valhalla?”

“Well at least you can still flirt. That’s a good sign. Here, drink this.”

She picked up the requested glass of water from the nearby coffee table where her intern’s intern had placed it and held it to Loki’s lips, letting him drink until he’d drained the glass. Then put the glass back down on the table and set to cleaning the wound, nudging him to lean forward so she could get to the exit wound in his back.

She grabbed the supplies Darcy had brought from the medicine cabinet. There was actually a full pack of wound dressing pads. They were presumably intended to last for a while, but Jane figured there wasn’t any point skimping and just used all of them, with half on the entrance and half on the exit wound, using an entire roll of bandage to fix them in place. Though even that wouldn’t be enough if he wasn’t able to heal himself after all. It’d hopefully prevent him getting blood all over the furniture at least.

“OK, that’s about as good as I can make it.”

He nodded, and closed his eyes again, but there was a different air about him and she sensed that he was concentrating, rather than passed out. Not sure how much he was aware of, she took one of his hands in hers and squeezed it for reassurance. Maybe it was her imagination, but she thought she saw his lips curve up slightly. This was Erik’s cue to emerge from behind his desk (this time wearing pants, much to her relief) and make his feelings known.

“Jane! What were you thinking bringing him here! You know better than anyone what he’s done to this planet, to me! He’s a monster!”

“I told you! He saved my life! And he was injured saving Thor! I wasn’t leaving him to die!”

“Who is he?”

“This is Loki. He led that alien invasion in New York last year and kind of messed with Erik’s head while he was at it. And while we’re doing introductions, who exactly are you? Darcy never told me your name.”

“I don’t think she knows my name.”

“I so do! It’s Evan!”

“Ian! It’s Ian!”

“Oh, yeah. Well I was close.” She handed Jane another glass of water. “Here. So how come you ended up getting into danger and getting your ass saved by Tall Dark and Crazy? I thought Thor took you to Asgard?”

“Thanks.” She paused to take a deep mouthful, wishing it was something stronger, even though that would probably be a bad idea. “He did. It’s kind of a long story.”

“Well I don’t think any of us have any plans for tonight. Unless you arranged another date with that cute Irish guy from earlier.”  
“No.” She turned to Erik. “You’ve been studying this thing. Have you figured out when it peaks?”

“Tomorrow,” he snapped, definitely not willing to forgive her yet. “Probably around mid morning. Unless I’ve miscalculated again – my original estimate was next week but things went faster than I expected.”

“Oh good, so we have a bit of time.”

“Time until what?”

“Till we get invaded by elves.”

Darcy nearly choked on her drink. “Elves? Seriously, elves? Are you kidding me? Fuck, man. I know we’re on first name terms with a god and we’ve seen a giant robot and an alien invasion, but elves?”

“Yeah, with guns, and spaceships.”

“Oh great.”

“Anyway, yes, Thor did take me to Asgard. It turned out I’d been infected by some sort of magical weapon. I got dragged through a portal into whatever corner of the universe it had been hidden in and apparently went off the radar for 5 hours, which freaked Thor out so he came down to see what was happening. Odin figures out it’s something called ‘the Aether’ and gives me a history lesson about how his dad killed all the Dark Elves and destroyed their weapon and everyone lived happily ever after.”

“Hang on,” said Ian. “If the weapon was destroyed how come you found it?”

“Turns out even immortal beings who can remember most of time itself suck at history.”

“So then wha- Oh lemme guess – the evil elves show up wanting their thing back?” said Darcy.

“Congratulations, you’re smarter than someone worshipped as a god of wisdom.”

“Awesome, and I already took the God of Thunder out with what is basically tame lightning. Maybe Mr Mischief will let me have a battle of wits when he wakes up. See if I can’t go three for three.”

“Good luck with that. So they show up with an invasion fleet and storm the place. They got chased off without getting what they wanted but... they killed a lot of people.” _It’s not your fault, she told herself. They’d have come after the Aether wherever it was, and killed anyone who stood in their way._ That didn’t provide much comfort though. She took a deep breath and continued on.

“One of them was the Queen. Odin took it pretty badly; he had me locked up, and refused to listen to any strategy that wasn’t ‘Wait until they come back and keep fighting each other until one side gets wiped out.’ Thor had a plan that was slightly less stupid. He’d bring me to the Elves’ home planet, let their leader Malekith pull the Aether out of me – which was definitely a good idea as it was slowly killing me – then destroy it while it was out in the open. So, not as stupid, in the same way that Kilimanjaro isn’t as high as Everest. He broke Loki out of jail because he knows secret shortcuts between realms, and arranged with his friends to create diversions so we could escape. We get to the Dark World-”

“Seriously?” interrupted Darcy. “Who names these places? Did it have a mountain range called the Mountains of Doom?”

“Hey don’t blame me! Anyway, we get there, and it all seems to be working. The Aether is out, Loki has pulled me out of the way, Thor has blasted it to smithereens with lightning... Then it just sort of reassembles itself and flows into Malekith, and we realise we messed up pretty bad. I guess he figured we’re too dumb to bother with, because he just walks away into his ship and flies off leaving a bunch of underlings and some fucked up mutated monster elf to deal with us.

“I’d love to pretend I turned into a badass and took them all out myself, but the truth is I got the hint pretty quickly that I’m in the way and go hide behind some rocks. Thor goes for the mutant elf while Loki takes on the rest. He kicks all their asses without even breaking a sweat, but Thor is getting the shit beaten out of him, and his hammer might as well be a toy for all the good it does, so he goes to back him up.”

She knocks back the remaining water in the glass, just to put off the end of the story a few seconds longer.

“He runs up behind the thing with this huge sword thing he grabbed from one of the elves, and runs it through. I’m about to jump up and cheer, when suddenly the thing just turns round as if Loki just tapped it on the shoulder! Then it picks him up and skewers him on the sword Loki just stabbed him with and hurls him on to the ground. Only Loki didn’t just steal a sword, he took a grenade too, and he stuck it on the creature and activated it while he was being shish-kebabed.”

“Damn, that’s pretty badass,” Darcy says.

“I don’t know how they work, but they implode rather than explode, sucking all the surrounding matter in. One of them nearly got me before I ran for cover. If Loki hadn’t risked his life to push me out of the way I’d be dead.”

“Shit, don’t tell me it survived that as well.”

“No, it died. Sucked into nothing.”

Erik spoke for the first time since she began her story. “Jane, what happened to Thor? Why isn’t he here?”

It took several attempts for her to speak, the words not wanting to come, as if not saying it would make it untrue.

“He’s dead. He saw his brother getting stabbed and just lost it. I don’t know if he didn’t see the grenade or went crazy at seeing two members of his family getting serious stab wounds in as many days, but he just threw himself at the monster and got pulled in along with it.”

Everyone was too stunned to speak for several minutes. Ian recovered first. Thor was just a distant figure to him, mentioned in news broadcasts about the Battle of Manhatten. “So how did you get back?”

“Loki insisted he could heal himself. But a storm hit so he had to just patch himself up enough to not bleed to death and we hid in a cave. Which by bizarre coincidence turned out to be the exact place those portals led to. And since somebody had helpfully dropped the car keys into it...”

“Ooops.”

“...we had transport. Which is just as well – if we’d tried to get home on public transport, he’d have died and I’d have been arrested, and probably nobody would believe a weirdly-dressed woman in a police cell raving about how a bunch of elves were gonna destroy the universe tomorrow if somebody didn’t stop them.”

Darcy grinned, but it looked more like a grimace. “Hell it sounds crazy to me and I know this stuff is for real.”

“So what did you guys do while I was gone?”

“Well we managed to talk ourselves out of being arrested – I guess none of the cops wanted to piss off Thor, just for busting people for wandering round an abandoned warehouse. We got the Tube home and I just frantically called you, Erik, and SHIELD repeatedly but nobody answered. Then we saw Erik on TV and were able to track him down from that.”

“You were on TV? What for?”

Erik looked sheepish. “I was trying to give a practical demonstration of the Convergence and its effects, but things got out of hand.”

“He stripped naked and ran around Stonehenge declaring that he was trying to save the world,” supplied Darcy.

“Oh Erik...”

“Yeah your boyfriend kinda broke him.”

“He’s not my boyfriend!”

“So why are you still holding hands with him?”

Jane looked down at her hand, still clasping Loki’s in reassurance. It had somehow felt so natural to her that she hadn’t even noticed her failure to let go. She tried to come up with an excuse, but her mind was a blank. She wasn’t even sure of the truth of why she was still holding his hand. Or why even now she couldn’t open her hand and let go.

“Hey, I’m not gonna judge. He’s pretty easy on the eye.”

This was not something Jane really wanted to talk about in front of Erik. Not only had he suffered at Loki’s hands, but it felt extremely awkward discussing the attractiveness of any guy in front of someone who was like a father to her. “So what happened after you found Erik?” she prompted, trying to steer the conversation from the uncomfortable topic.

“Nothing much. We went to bust him out, got attacked by a flock of starlings, and came back here so Erik could work on trying to stop the fabric of space-time from being torn apart or whatever it is he’s doing.”

“Not that that will stop an army.” He sighed wearily and ran a hand through his hair.

“But you can stop the effects of the Convergence, right?”

“Maybe. The right signals, transmitted to receivers placed in the right locations, should be able to stabilise the effects. I modified the scanner I’d been using for detecting the anomalies, and built gravimetric spikes to carry the signal. But it’s still only theoretical. I did try to run a small test to confirm its effectiveness, but...”

“But you got arrested for indecent exposure.” Darcy filled in the rest.

“Well how sure are you that the theory is sound?”

Erik sighed. “I’ve been going over my calculations and I think it will work, but I would feel a lot better if I’d been able to do a trial run. And what about the Dark Elves? Closing the portals won’t help if they’re coming here in spaceships. The Avengers could maybe help if we could get them here in time, but I don’t know how to contact them, and SHEILD aren’t responding to our calls.”

“I think I might have an idea about how we can use your equipment to stop them. And it’s worth trying SHIELD again. Maybe the threat of an actual invasion will grab their attention more than vague warnings about portals. Even if they just show up to confiscate my research again.” She reached into her coat pocket for her phone with the hand that wasn’t still holding Loki’s, but turned to look at him when she felt his fingers twitch in hers.

“I think he’s waking up.”

Loki gave a groan and opened his eyes. Erik moved further away from the couch, back towards his corner.

“How are you feeling?” Jane asked, tentatively, unsure if he had been able to do what he claimed he could. He blinked a couple of times, then seemed to focus and turned to her.

“Much better.” He looked around at the others, his eyes fixing on Ian. “You! Are you Richard?”

“Wha? No, his name is Ian!”

Ian looked terrified at being the target of Loki’s apparent anger. “Who is Richard exactly?”

“He’s that guy I didn’t have lunch with. He called me.”

“When?” asked Darcy.

“While we were in the cave on Svartalfheim.”

“You got phone reception on a different planet? What network are you with?”

“It was because we were close to a portal. Turns out anything can get through, including signals.”

“Huh. Anyway what did Richard say in that phonecall that pissed you off enough that you look like you wanna kill him?”

“Nothing. I merely feel he is unworthy of courting someone who has been courted by Thor.”

“Yeah sure. I can’t help noticing that you don’t yet seem to have figured out what Jane took ages to realise and still hasn’t stopped doing.”

“What?” He suddenly looked down at their joined hands. “Oh.”

June at last removed her hand from his. “Erm, yeah. Sorry. I just thought you might need some comfort or- Hey is anybody hungry? I’m starving.”

Darcy got up and walked over to her laptop. “I’ll order pizza. Don’t think any of us feel like cooking. OK I know Jane and Erik’s usual orders, and I doubt Loki knows what pizza is so I’ll just pick one that looks good. Ian, what do ya want?”

Ian went over to see what website Darcy was ordering from, leaving Jane alone with Loki on the couch.

“What is this ‘pizza’?”

“A sort of flatbread, covered in cheese and sauce and different toppings. Can I take those off?” She pointed at the bandages. He nodded, and she set to removing another set of bandages, hoping it would be the last time she had to do something like this. His wound had bled more during his healing – evidently he’d had to abandon the patch of magic holding the wound closed at some point during the healing process - so needed cleaning again. She did so carefully, still not quite able to believe the damage could be fixed.

“Wow,” she breathed, unable to resist touching the area where the injury had been. “That’s amazing!”

Erik seemed to decide things had gone far enough. “Jane! Can I have a word with you? In private.”

He led her out on to the balcony, shutting the door behind them. “What are you thinking, Jane?! You know what he did!” She opened her mouth to protest. “And don’t even pretend you don’t know what I mean! I can see the way you’ve been looking at him.”

“It’s not like that! Look, I know what he did. But he saved my life twice on Svartalfheim! He saved Thor’s life! Tried to anyway. He didn’t have to do any of that! He could have been just the littlest bit too slow saving me, or run away while Thor was busy fighting, but he didn’t. And maybe he did it just to get back in Asgard’s good books – though I’m not sure Asgard has any if Odin is anything to go by – or maybe he did it because he’s a good person with a screwed up moral compass, but the point is he did it. And, Erik, Malekith killed his mom. He seems to have a lot of issues with his family, but I think he really cared about her. Whatever his feelings about Earth, he wants to stop Malekith just as much as we do, and we can’t afford to pass up any allies, considering SHIELD seem to be ignoring us.”

“I don’t trust him! I’d rather take our chances with the elves alone than rely on him! Didn’t you say you have a plan?”

“I do. I think I do anyway. But I don’t know if it’ll work, and even if it does I’d still like some backup, at least to keep the elves busy and distract them from attacking people. And he has the right to some revenge – they didn’t even let him go to her funeral, Erik.”

He sighed angrily. “Fine, but this is a bad idea. He’s trouble.”

“Well feel free to try sending him back to Asgard. By the way what is with the no-pants-running-around-historic-sites thing? I thought you said you were doing fine.”

“I am fine! It’s just hard trying to get back to normal after someone has gone poking around in your brain!”

“Yeah well I am going to have words with SHIELD when I finally get through to them about their not providing proper therapy. C’mon, let’s get back inside. I don’t think Darcy and Loki should be left in the same room together without supervision.”

Thankfully Darcy was nowhere in sight when they stepped back inside. Ian was sitting on a chair opposite the couch, talking to Loki.

“Perhaps you should tell her of your interest?”

“I will if you will.”

“What do you mean by that, mortal?” snarled Loki, glaring at the hapless intern.

“Oh come on-” They suddenly realised they were no longer alone. “Oh hey guys! Pizza will be here soon.”

“Great.” Jane walked over to the desk and looked through the results of Erik’s research. Erik joined her, pointing things out and adding explanations as she scrolled through the data. Some of it was barely coherent, but it looked like the idea she had been considering might work. Might being the operative word here, but it wasn’t as if they were drowning in options.

Darcy walked back in from the direction of the bathroom. “Erik finished giving you The Talk then?” she asked, leaning on the desk next to Jane.

Jane ignored her. “Malekith is going to fire the Aether at a spot where all the Nine Realms are connecting.”

Erik immediately understood the reasoning behind that. “Amplifying the weapon’s impact. For each additional world the power will increase exponentially. The effect would be universal.” He looked horrified by the idea, clearly not having imagined something like this even in his worst case scenario projections of the Convergence’s effects.

“Yes but the Alignment is only temporary. He must be in exactly the right place at exactly the right time in order to do this.” Erik jumped, having evidently tried so hard to ignore Loki’s presence that he had forgotten about him being sprawled on the couch.

“Well, how do we know where that is?”

“We follow the directions.” Erik marched over to the dining table, sweeping everything off it and spreading a map over the surface. “This has happened before, thousands of years ago, and the Ancients were there to see it. All the great constructions, the Mayans, the Chinese, the Egyptians. They made use of the gravitational effects of the Convergence. And they left us a map.” He grabbed a pen and began marking lines across the map between points that seemed to make sense to him. “All marking coordinates taking us... here.” He pointed at the spot where the lines converged.

“Greenwich?”

“The walls between worlds will be almost non-existent. Physics is going to go ballistic. Increases and decreases in gravity, spatial extrusions, the very fabric of reality is going to be torn apart.”

The doorbell rang loudly in the silence that fell after Jane’s statement, and everyone whirled to look at the door as if something was about to burst through and attack.

“Oh right, that’ll be the pizza!” Darcy said, deflating the tension.

*******************************************************************

The pizzas were mostly consumed in silence, everyone too busy sating their hunger to bother with anything else. Loki had eyed the food with suspicion, but that hadn’t prevented him from consuming his in the time it had taken Jane to get through a third of hers, and he was now eyeing the remaining two thirds with barely concealed interest. She waved her hand in consent at his unspoken question, and he reached over and grabbed one of her slices. He was still shirtless, and she found herself unable to stop staring at his bare chest. It was just so incredible how he had healed such a serious wound so completely – there was nothing to indicate it had happened apart from some torn and bloodstained clothing in a pile on the floor. Eventually Darcy broke the silence, unable to keep quiet for more than a few minutes.

“So anyway, what was that you were saying earlier about a completely brilliant plan for dealing with the Dark Elves?”

“I don’t know about brilliant, but it’s a plan at least. Okay, Erik, those gravimetric spikes of yours can stabilise the effects of the Convergence, right?”

“Yes but I don’t have enough equipment or time to set up anything that will prevent our world linking to the others, and stabilising the effects enough to close the smaller portals won’t prevent the elves arriving if they’re travelling by ship.”

“I know. I was thinking we could tweak the equipment to manipulate the anomalies rather than shut them down. It’s hard to stage an invasion when your forces are getting scattered and lost or being confused about which way is up.”

Darcy chewed on a piece of crust absently. “You sure that’s gonna be enough? I mean even if you’re sending half the army in odd directions there’s still gonna be a bunch of them fucking shit up. And this Mollykeith guy sounds like he could do some major damage.”

“You will leave him to me,” Loki snarled.

“Okay but are you gonna be able to handle it on your own? Don’t get me wrong, you seem pretty badass, but if I followed Jane’s story right then he got away from you twice before...”

“Once. I was locked away in the dungeons when he invaded Asgard. And the second time was down to Thor’s foolish plan. I told the oaf that it would get us ki-” He broke off abruptly, freezing for a moment, before snapping his jaw shut and looking away.

Jane fought down the feeling of grief, and the guilt at how she had managed to forget, even for a moment, that Thor was gone. And then another wave of guilt at how she hadn’t actually felt that guilty for forgetting…

“That’s all the more reason we need backup. I’m sure you can handle them on your own, Loki, but it can’t hurt to have a bit of help. I’m trying SHIELD again. Maybe a couple of Avengers are available and can get here by tomorrow morning. Just hope it won’t get awkward with them fighting alongside a guy they were fighting against last year.”

She grabbed her phone off the table and dialled the number, but Loki snatched the phone out of her hand before she could speak.

“Greetings, mortal,” he sneered in a sinister tone which had Erik pressing himself back into his chair as if he was trying to become one with it. “I am Loki. I am sure you remember me. I have the mortal Jane Foster in my keeping. Don’t worry, she is quite safe - for now. If you wish for her to remain so, I will be in Greenwich tomorrow morning, where we can discuss terms. More precise directions will not be necessary. The army rampaging through the area would be enough of a clue. I do so look forward to seeing your ‘Avengers’ again.”

He pressed the button to end the call and handed the device back to her, waking her from the almost trance-like state his voice had lulled her into. She stared at it for a moment, wondering what had come over her, before coming to her senses and turning the phone off before SHIELD could call back.

“There. I trust that will get their attention.”

Ian yawned suddenly, which set Jane off. There. It was tiredness that was causing her to find Loki’s voice soothing.

“Who is sleeping where?” asked Darcy. “It’s kinda crowded but I don’t wanna leave in case any Avengers show up.”

She thought for a moment. “Ian and Erik can take the bed in the spare room, and the two of us can share my mom’s bed. They’re both big enough for two people. Loki can have the couch.”

Erik fled immediately, relieved to have an excuse to leave. Ian followed him, yawning again and looking as if he would fall asleep as soon as his head hit the pillow. Jane retrieved a pillow and some blankets for Loki, smiled and wished him goodnight, and then escaped herself.

“You sure you don’t want me to switch places with him?” asked Darcy, smirking. “I don’t mind sleeping on the couch if it’s for a worthy cause.”

Jane threw a set of pyjamas over her head. “Go to bed. You’re obviously sleep deprived,” she muttered, turning away and changing into her own nightclothes.

Darcy laughed, rustling noises suggesting she was also getting changed. “I’ll tell you something though.”

“What?”

“He’d have had a much easier job of getting people to kneel if he’d gone around shirtless like that.”

Jane snorted.

“Hey if he tries to take over the world again you could be queen. That’d be pretty cool.”

“Not funny, Darce.”

They both got into bed, and she shut her eyes, trying to drift off to sleep. She cast around for things to lull her into the rest she badly needed (falling unconscious didn’t really count as sleep), and found herself recalling Loki’s smooth voice as he’d goaded SHIELD. It had been so compelling... and soothing... and the way he had said her name... Her eyes flew open, and all relaxed feeling vanished.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeah, lots of rehashing of stuff you knew already. But it's not like you can have Loki walk in when everyone was expecting Thor & there not need to be a lot of explanations & conflict that can't be stashed away behind a 'Some time later...'. Besides, it gives Jane an opportunity to sing praises to Loki's badassery. More Loki POV next chapter.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So sorry for the delay in getting this done. I never expected it to take this long, as it's basically just Loki & Jane sitting & talking & getting a few things off their chests, & I had sections of it already written & had a good idea what else needed to be included. What I didn’t take into account was how hard it would be to fit all those bits together & to link them into a coherent conversation. Stuff that was supposed to not show up until chapter 5 insisted on happening here, stuff that I never intended to occur at all ended up taking place, & stuff that I’d planned on being in this chapter got pushed back because it just wouldn’t fit.

Loki lay glaring up at the ceiling as if it was to blame for his inability to sleep. It was imperative he rest, as he could not afford any disadvantage, however small. But too much had happened today. Thor, who had seemed an integral part of the universe, was gone, and it felt so wrong that he kept forgetting that he was no more, his mind unable to accept such a radical alteration of reality. And because of that, he was suddenly the Nine Realms’ best hope. Loki, who should _know his place_. Loki who was _cast out, defeated_. Loki, who _lacked conviction_. Loki, whose birthright was to _die_. Loki, who had never received much in the way of gratitude, and likely wouldn’t this time, especially given the realm he would be fighting on; if he survived the mortals would likely seize the opportunity for revenge while he was weakened in the aftermath. He should leave the Realms to their fate, depart for other worlds beyond Yggdrasil. There was no reason to care, no incentive for him beyond a vengeance that would do nothing to reclaim what had been lost. He should go. Now. Leave this mortal hovel and not look back.

Yet somehow he could not bring himself to do so. His mother’s face drifted into his mind, with that sad smile she had worn when he had denied her, not realising that it would be the last thing he would say to her. Out of all the people in his life, she had never given up on him, even defying Odin to visit him and sending him things to make his imprisonment more comfortable. Foolish, pathetic sentiment!

He tried to push all thoughts of her away, overwhelmed by the wave of grief that swamped him, and somehow his mind caught on Jane. Mortal, insignificant Jane. A little mouse, but one that snarled defiance at predators. His hand twitched at the memory of her hand in his. Had she really sat by him as he had healed? Hearing movement, he opened his eyes to see the object of his thoughts heading to the small kitchen area. She was attempting to be quiet, but he had sharp senses and even if he had been sleeping she would have awoken him. He watched her quietly moving about, focused on preparing whatever it was she had come in search of. She was dressed for sleep, in simple shirt and trousers decorated with stars and planets. He could hardly critique her choice of attire - not having any actual sleepwear himself (and not feeling like dealing with the state of his armour until after a good night’s sleep), he had retrieved his prison clothing from storage and donned that instead.

She seemed to notice she was being watched, and spun around to look at him, seeming guilty.

“Oh shit, did I wake you? I’m sorry. This kettle is pretty loud.”

“You did not wake me. Sleep does not seem to want to come to me easily tonight.”

“Same for me. I was hoping some tea would help. Do you want some? There’s enough water boiled.”

“I will, thank you.” Perhaps it would help him find sleep. And in the meantime some company would hopefully serve to banish the thoughts that haunted him. Some small part of him sneered that such company was beneath him, but he ignored it. A mere day before he had been in Asgard’s dungeons amongst the scum of the Nine Realms. This was a considerable improvement. And who knows where he could end up tomorrow. Mortals hoping to take advantage of post-battle exhaustion could be the least of his worries if Asgard seized the opportunity to recapture him and put him right back in that cell, this time without the comforts that Frigga had been able to provide.

He was startled out of his thoughts by Jane. “You want milk or sugar?” She received a blank look in return. “Never mind. I’ll put a bit of both in.” She turned back to the counter and busied herself with the drinks a few moments, before bringing them over and setting them in front of him. He sat up, allowing her space on the couch. She threw herself down beside him and picked up one of the cups, but didn’t drink anything, instead staring into the contents like she was looking for answers.

“Do you think Asgard knows?”

“Knows what?”

“About what happened. About…” she waves her hand as if the movement could somehow dislodge the words she wanted to say. He knew what she meant.

“Normally I would say yes, as Heimdall would have seen and reported what had occurred. But Thor said he had Heimdall’s support in our escape, so he is almost certainly under arrest for treason and his counsel considered suspect. Of course, Odin would be a fool to lock him away with the realms in chaos, but…”

“…But it’s his answer to everything.”

He snorted with derision. “Indeed. He likely sent scouting parties after us, who would have tracked our boat using its locator beacon, found Mjolnir abandoned and realised that Thor must be no more. But that storm would have hindered their progress, if it did not render the search impossible, so there’s no guarantee of that.”

“I totally forgot about the hammer. Should we have brought that with us?”

“We could not have. Only Thor can lift and wield it.”

“Oh. Well then. I suppose it makes a good memorial, and it means they would know what happened.”

“Would they, though?”

“What do you mean? You said yourself that they’d know it meant he was dead.”

“They would know he was dead, it’s true. But there’s nothing to point to how. Thor left Asgard in my company, and no less than three people made it clear that they fully expected me to betray him. I have no doubt that Heimdall and Fandral had similar reservations about my involvement, but did not share them with me. I am quite certain that I will be considered the prime suspect.” Remembering the drink in front of him, he picked up the cup and took an experimental sip. It was pleasant enough, with a slight floral taste that reminded him of the drinks his mother had prepared from flowers gathered in her gardens. He forced down the grief that again threatened to take hold of him and resumed speaking. “People will always be determined to assume the worst of me.”

“Well you haven’t really gone out of your way to prove them wrong.”

“You know nothing!” he snapped.

“…Jon Snow.”

“What?”

“Uh sorry. It’s from a book. And a TV show. You’d probably like it. Lots of political intrigue and fighting over who gets to sit on a throne. Never mind. But you killed Thor with that giant robot thing. I saw it. And you can’t tell me the Chitauri invasion was some kind of misunderstanding.”

“I did not intend to kill Thor. I simply wanted to ensure he did not return to Asgard until I had had the chance to demonstrate that I was just as worthy of the throne as him, whether or not I even wanted the cursed thing. I had convinced him that he was forbidden to return and that should have been it, but of course Lady Sif and the idiots three had to go running straight to him because they’re unable to do anything without him. So I sent the Destroyer to keep them occupied. I won’t lie and say that I cared what happened to that band of fools, but I just wanted Thor to stay where he was. And then he had the nerve to spout that empty apology without even knowing what it was he should apologise for, and I just wanted to hurt him. I forgot that he was mortal or how damned fragile you people are.”

He played with a loose thread on his shirt. “As for the invasion, suffice to say there is more to that than anyone knows about.”

“Really? You’re not even going to try to defend that?”

“Would you accept any explanation offered?”

“How would I know unless I heard it?”

“Whether or not you would is irrelevant. I do not wish to talk about it.”

“Fine. Whatever. Don’t you want to prove them wrong though? You’re a trickster; shouldn’t you be all about defying expectations?”

“I’m sure battling Malekith will confuse them sufficiently.”

“Probably. That’s not really why you’re doing it though, is it?”

He stiffened. “Malekith means to destroy the universe and turn it into a nightmare that would be inhospitable to anything not a Dark Elf or other creature of darkness. I am acting to save my own skin, and the fact that my goals coincide with yours is coincidental.”

“Oh come on. I saw what Malekith intends to do with the Aether, and I had a chance to look around the library while I was in Asgard. There are other worlds out there, other galaxies, and I bet you could get to them easily if you wanted to. If you were really in it for yourself you’d leave, but you haven’t.”

He stared into his tea, studiously ignoring her.

“I don’t think you’re as aloof and uncaring as you’d like people to think you are.”

“You dare to presume you know me?”

“Yes I dare!” She glared at him, and once again he had to admire her spirit. Sighing, she moved closer to him, as if proximity would underline her point. “You don’t have to be a monster, you know.”

“But I am a monster. It is in my nature.”

“Now you’re just being melodramatic.”

“Oh, really?” Enraged that she spouted the same cheap platitudes his not-family had in their dismissals of his justified anger at their lies, he tore away at the illusion that concealed his true, monstrous face. Let her speak her empty words now. Indeed, her eyes widened and her mouth dropped open, and almost imperceptibly, she drew back. “Did I not say as much to Malekith? I am Loki of Jotunheim. I do not belong in the shining majesty of Asgard.”

“Well apparently neither do I, so that makes two of us.” She leaned back in, even closer than she had been before. “So, this is what you really look like? Huh, nice.” Then to his shock, she reached out and touched his cheek, tracing one of the lines there. “These look- Oh wow, you’re cold!”

“Well of course. I am a Jotun – a Frost Giant.”

“Giant? OK you’re pretty tall but I wouldn’t say _giant_.”

“Well yes, that is likely why I was _abandoned at birth_ ,” he snarled, causing her to flinch.

“Oh god, I’m sorry! Shit, that was pretty rude of me to assume like that.” She looked at him sadly. “They really just abandoned you? That’s horrible.”

“Yes. I was then taken in by Odin. Not out of the goodness of his heart, but because he could see that I was the son of their king, and would be a useful tool. But instead of doing what he usually does with his collection of stolen relics, he instead locked me in a prison of lies, raising me to believe that I was his son, and giving me the illusion that I was something more than a game piece, when it seems like that is all I am doomed to be. A monster led to believe that it is an actual person.”

“You are an actual person.”

“Look at me! Look at me and tell me that I am not a monster!”

She looked him firmly in the eye and replied, “You are not a monster.” He could detect no falsity.

“How can you look upon me and say that I am not?”

“How can you say that you are?”

The words burst out of him. “I told him where to go!” he snapped, remembering only just in time to keep his voice low enough not to wake people. “I told him the best way out of the dungeons! And because of that he avoided most of the guards or warriors who might have at least impeded his progress! It is my fault she is dead! And the last thing I told her was she was that not my mother!” He clawed at himself, grabbing clumps of hair in his hands and tearing at them. Jane grabbed his wrists, and though she was no match for his strength, he allowed her to hold him in place. “What else am I but a monster? Spurning what I took for granted would always be there, and putting it in danger without a thought.”

She put her arms around him, and unable to hold it in any more, he wept into her hair, past the point of caring about dignity.

“Hey, stop it. There’s no way you could have known. It looked just like a prison riot until the Dark Elf ships showed up. You had every reason to believe he was just a really tough prisoner who’d cause a bit of damage before getting taken down. You can’t blame yourself for this. I won’t say it’s not a dick move, but I’d hardly call it monstrous.”

He relaxed slightly, but kept his face buried in her hair, embarrassed at losing his composure, and in front of a mortal at that.

“For what it’s worth, I think she still cared for you. I only got to spend a little time with her and we didn’t have much chance to talk, but she seemed really nice, and she mentioned wanting to see her sons happy, so unless Thor has another brother somewhere that he forgot to mention, she still loved you. She certainly didn’t care what species you are.”

She twisted slightly so she could see part of his face, refusing to let him hide as he childishly wanted to, like he had once hidden from Frost Giants by hiding his head under the blankets.

“Look, even if you’re a monster, that doesn’t necessarily make you a bad person.”

“That makes no sense.”

She extricated herself from his embrace and walked over to the large screen in front of where they were sitting. “Since I still don’t feel like sleeping right now and I guess you don’t either, I’m gonna take the opportunity to introduce you to some Midgardian culture on the subject of monsters.”

She grabbed a box from a pile nearby and extracted a disc which she inserted into a slot in a box, before busying herself with the equipment in front of her. He reached out and picked the forgotten cup off the table, and was startled to realise his skin was still blue. The tea was cold, of course, but the temperature – perhaps understandably – did not bother him much, and he drank the remainder of the cup’s contents. Refusing to wear this form any longer, he pulled the comforting illusion of his Aesir form back over him once more. Jane rose from her crouch and turned round, looking surprised to see the change.

“Oh, you’re not blue anymore.”

“Of course not. What sane person would happily wear the form of a monster?”

“Maybe you’ll feel differently once you’ve seen this movie all about monsters,” she said, resuming her seat beside him. She picked up a device from the table and pointed it towards the screen, then leaned against him with no sign of fear. He should have been outraged at her presumptuousness, but he had sought contact from her first; he could hardly balk now.

The ‘movie’ was indeed all about monsters, but it was utter ridiculousness about monsters collecting screams to power their world, and two monsters saving a little girl rather than eating her, as any true monster would surely do.

Afterwards she turned to him and raised an eyebrow questioningly. Refusing to admit he had been entertained, he sniffed haughtily. “That was nonsense.”

“It probably bears more relation to reality than whatever Asgard filled your head with.”

“Oh, you think yourself better than them?”

“Yup!” she said with a grin, and he laughed despite himself.

During the course of the movie she had leaned against him even more, almost sprawled over him, with her head on his shoulder, instead of just resting against him as she had started out doing. After a few minutes of companionable silence, Jane shifted against him.

“They’re going to be devastated aren’t they – Asgard – when they find out about Thor? Earth too, probably; a lot of people here loved him.”

He peered down at her. “You speculate about how others will feel about his death, but you do not mention your own feelings. Do you not mourn? You are his-”

“Don’t!”

“But you of all people must-”

“That’s just it – I don’t! Not in the way I should anyway.” He felt a wave of anger at her heartless dismissal, and it must have shown on his face, for she hastily added, “I don’t mean I don’t care at all! It’s just that…” she trailed off, seemingly struggling to convey her thoughts. “When my dad died, I felt like part of me died with him. There was this void inside me, and it seemed to be trying to pull the rest of me into its orbit, like when a star implodes and sucks in the surrounding matter. It’s still there really; I’ve just become used to it.”

His right arm was draped across her body, with his hand resting on her thigh, and without really thinking about it he brought it up to embrace her.

“With Thor, I feel terrible. I feel like it’s my fault somehow. I feel like some fundamental law of the universe has been broken. I feel empathy for those who looked up to him as a hero, and for his close friends and family. But I don’t feel that sense of loss.”

He attempted to formulate a response that didn’t sound trite, but nothing came. He knew himself that there was little that could soothe the loss of a beloved parent, and he could not bring himself to lecture her on her lack of grief for Thor when he was struggling with his own emotions on the matter. However it seemed a response was not expected, as she continued on with her speech.

“Wanna know the worst thing? I’m not even sure if I liked him that much, deep down. I mean, he seemed sweet and earnest, and wow those muscles... He sort of swept me off my feet – literally! And then he went away, and I started wondering if there was anything real between us. And then he comes back, and everything is amazing and I’m just overwhelmed, but... But when I try to analyse my feelings, I can’t put my finger on why. I don’t even know anything about him. Other than what I read in the myths, and it’s pretty safe to say that they’re not a useful source. Probably if I’d gotten to know him I’d have grown to love him as he seemed to love me, but I’ll never know.”

He frowned in confusion. “Surely you must have spent enough time together? The Bifrost was repaired months ago.”

“Huh? No. He was gone for 2 years! And in all that time he didn’t even send me a message, even when he was in New York! I wasn’t even sure he was still interested. I get that he was kinda busy fighting mighty battles or whatever, but he seriously couldn’t spare five minutes to drop by and say, ‘Hey, sorry I’ve not been able to see you, but I haven’t forgotten about you!’ Just... something! He just leaves me and then shows up out of the blue one day as if nothing has happened because this Heimdall guy-”

Her eyes widened and she sat upright, insofar as she could with his arm wrapped around her shoulders.

“Oh my god! Was he watching me? Like, I know he’s supposed to watch everything - I did some reading after Thor left - but, was he watching me specially?!”

Loki shrugged. “Probably.”

“So he could’ve been watching me in the shower or something? That is really really creepy!”

His mind conjured up an image of her bathing and he hurriedly banished it. What in the Nine Realms was wrong with him?! Obviously he needed sleep.

“It is Heimdall. He is so used to watching over everything that I doubt it affects him at all. He may as well be observing insects scuttling about.”

“It’s still creepy as fuck,” she muttered, leaning back against him with the lack of fear that he was growing accustomed to. He considered her words about Thor. Had his brother really not paid so much as a brief visit? Even in the midst of chaos enveloping the Realms there would have been chances, and while in his cell he’d assumed Thor was doing just that, while he chafed at his confinement.

His late brother really was a fool, to take something for granted, to dismiss someone believing there would be chances later to- His thoughts came to a sudden halt, and he desperately fought back the pain that threatened to overwhelm him. He would almost rather be back in the hands of Thanos and the Other than this.

Surprised that Jane had not reacted to his distress, he looked down at he to see that she had fallen asleep. The blanket she had given him earlier in the night was bundled at one end of the couch. Carefully, trying not to jostle her, he reached down and pulled it over them both, lying back so she lay on top of him. He would lie here a while like this, before carrying her back to her bed. Just a little while…


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This got pretty long, so I've split it into two chapters.
> 
> This chapter is dedicated to my Hot Toys Loki figure, which withstood much poking & prodding in the name of figuring out what the hell Loki is wearing & what might have gotten damaged (show me on the doll where Kurse stabbed you ;P). Damnit, dude, are that many layers even necessary? -_-

The first thing that Jane became aware of was that she was lying on someone. What? Did she roll over on Darcy during the night somehow? Embarrassing! Wait, the chest that her head was resting on was flat… The events of last night came back to her in a rush and she sat up so fast the momentum sent her tipping over the edge of the couch, and she would have fallen if it wasn’t for Loki’s arm holding her in place. An arm that clearly belonged to someone who was now awake. Oh great, so sneaking quietly back to bed was no longer an option. She turned her head to look at him. He was looking slightly bleary-eyed, like he hadn’t properly woken up yet, and his hair was dishevelled. It was kind of cute, which wasn’t a word she had ever expected to apply to Loki.

“Uh, so… Good morning, I guess?”

He blinked several times before his eyes focused on her properly. “I fell asleep.” He frowned, as if this had somehow been a mistake on his part.

“Isn’t that what you wanted to do?”

“Not with somebody using me as a bed.”

“Gee, sorry,” she snapped. Had she even fallen asleep on top of him anyway? The last she could remember was leaning against him while they sat together. For them to have ended up lying together, he must have moved them. And she couldn’t help but notice that for all his apparent annoyance at her presence, he didn’t seem in a hurry to withdraw his arm from around her.

Waking up next to someone you hadn’t even had sex with should not be this awkward! Still, at least nobody had seen.

This was of course Darcy’s cue to walk into the room. “Hey, Jane, did you-”

The two of them hastily jumped apart and moved several inches away from each other, but it was too late. Loki opened his mouth as if to make an excuse for their position.

Darcy raised an eyebrow. “Yeah, don’t even bother with the ‘It’s not what it looks like’s, because I’m pretty sure it is exactly what it looks like.” She moved past them to the kitchen, calling over her shoulder, “Just be glad I caught you and not Erik!”

Jane winced. Next to her, Loki shifted uncomfortably. “Where might I find the bathing chamber here?”

Darcy pointed towards the hallway. “Go through that door, and you’ll see it. Towels are in the cupboard next to it if you need any.”

He hastily rose from the couch and left the room in a manner that suggested that he would have run if it wasn’t undignified.

“Huh, does that count as a walk of shame?” said Darcy, smirking, prepping the coffeemaker.

“Why are you so casual about this? Shouldn’t you be freaking out and calling me a traitor or something?”

“Ehhh, Erik will be doing plenty of that, and way I see it there’s not much point – it’s not like you don’t know what he’s done, so why bother pointing it out? Bang him, don’t bang him; it’s up to you,” she said, while moving around the kitchen grabbing bowl, spoon, cereal and milk from their respective storage spaces. She then paused and looked seriously at Jane over her glasses.

“Besides, all I care about is if he treats you right, not whether he’s evil or whatever. That’s the Avengers’ problem. He could try to take over the universe and I won’t care so long as he isn’t a jerk to you.” She pointed the spoon at Jane. “But if he so much as looks at you funny, then I will tase him in the balls, even if he’s just saved a bunch of orphans from a burning building while curing them of cancer.”

For some reason Jane was disappointed, like she needed Darcy to forbid her from a relationship with Loki. Which was ridiculous, because she’s a grown adult who doesn’t need somebody else to set down rules to for her to follow. And she wasn’t interested in Loki at all. Sure, he was incredibly attractive, and he could be quite charming when he wanted to be, and he was obviously not as cold and emotionless as he liked to make out… But that didn’t mean she wanted any sort of relationship! She was just acknowledging him as a person, that’s all. Of course she was intrigued by the man behind the notoriety.

Seeing her phone on the table in front of her, she picked it up to see if she had any messages, before remembering she’d turned it off last night. Better to keep it off for now, in case they tracked the phone signal here and caused the five of them to waste time trying to explain what was really going on, and even if the agents believed them they’d never allow Loki to leave and it’d turn into a fight. She didn’t like not knowing if they had backup or not, but it was best to go along with Loki’s ‘threat’ and delay awkward explanations until after the battle. If there was an after. _Way to stay positive, Jane._ She got up and took it over to where she’d left her charger and plugged it in. She’d need to be able to communicate with Darcy and it would be disastrous if her battery died at a crucial moment. Plus if they survived this there was a good chance she might need to urgently call a lawyer for when SHIELD started up with questions about the company she was keeping. Assuming that would even help with SHIELD, who would probably black-bag the lot of them. _Oh yeah keep up with those positive thoughts!_

She grabbed her own cereal and joined Darcy at the dinner table. “You’re seriously not even remotely fazed by the very idea of my sleeping with a guy who tried to take over the world? Which by the way is not going to happen – I just fell asleep on the couch, that’s all!”

“We’ve faced down a giant robot, me and Ian played a real life game of Portal in a stairwell yesterday, I saw you beamed up to another world, there’s a guy who was worshiped by the Vikings in your mom’s bathroom, and we’re about to go and save the world from elves. You finding an incredibly hot guy incredibly hot doesn’t even register on the weird scale.”

Jane was saved from having to reply to that by Ian emerging from the spare bedroom, muttering a groggy “Mornin’.” before stumbling over to the toaster and inserting a few slices of bread. Seeing that the coffee was ready, Darcy left the table to get her caffeine hit. Generously, she poured a mug for her boss.

“Thanks,” she said, accepting it gratefully.

“I’d have put milk and sugar in, but I know you like ‘em a little dark and bitter,” her intern responded with a wink.

“For the hundredth time, Darcy, I am not inter-”

And then Loki re-entered the room, wearing nothing but a towel, and Jane forgot how to breathe.

He nodded at them, sitting back down on the couch and picking through his discarded clothing, apparently checking the extent of the damage from his being stabbed.

“So, Jane, you were saying?” Jane glared at her intern. How was it they had a trickster god in the room, and he _wasn’t_ the most mischievous person present? She scooped the last few bites of cereal from the bottom of the bowl, determined to ignore everyone. Especially Loki.

“Hey, Mr Mischief? You want coffee, toast, cereal?” Darcy called over to him.

He turned his head towards them, and the movement caused a large drop of water to fall from his hair and run down his chest. She followed its path down his torso, transfixed, barely hearing his, “What in all the realms is ‘coffee’?”

The spoon fell from her limp hand, and the clang it hitting the bowl woke her from her reverie, but drew the attention of everyone in the room. She stood up so quickly she knocked her chair over.

“You know what, he can have mine. I’m gonna take a shower now while it’s free. I’ll get another cup later.”

She picked her chair up off the floor and fled from the room, not stopping until she was in the bathroom and had the door locked behind her, as if that could keep the embarrassment and awkwardness at bay. Perhaps letting Malekith destroy the universe was worth it to avoid having to show her face to anyone again.

Stripping off her pyjamas, she stepped under the spray, and nearly shrieked at the icy temperature of the water. _Dammit, Loki!_ She hastily twisted the dial, relaxing as the temperature rose to warmer levels. “Jerk,” she muttered. _Sexy, charming jerk._ She thought back to their conversation last night, curled up together on the couch drinking tea and sharing what was haunting them. He tried so hard to present a cold exterior to the world, but it was a fragile, cracked shell, and anyone who managed to get close enough could easily catch glimpses of what lay beneath. Probably why he tried to push people away – keep people distant and they won’t question the façade. Why put up the front though? Was he really so angry at Odin that he was determined to make himself the most hated man in the universe out of spite? Was he so certain that he could never compete with Thor that he strived to be his opposite? Was he throwing himself into the role of villain because his actions during Thor’s banishment led everyone to believe he was evil, like a cat who had mistimed a jump and wanted you to believe that it had intended to roll on the floor all along? And why did he not want to talk about the Chitauri invasion? Was it her imagination or had he sounded almost fearful when he’d told her he didn’t want to talk about it?

She shouldn’t even be thinking of him! If Thor had left a body behind then it would be barely cold by now and here she was freaking out over his brother! He’d thought enough of her to talk about her to his parents ( _although not enough to let her know he was OK_ , a traitorous part of her pointed out). He was handsome, and nice, and brave, and noble, and… and… She really didn’t know that much about him beyond those observations of his personality. In the brief time she’d spent with him, they’d talked about Asgard, and Earth, and the universe and how their peoples looked at it, but not about themselves, or their likes and dislikes, and all the little things that tell you more about a person than that they were ‘nice’.

He probably knew plenty about her what with spying on her. She suddenly remembered her horrified query to Loki last night about Heimdall’s gaze, and automatically tried to cover herself. _Oh to hell with it. Let the guy have an eyeful._ She unfolded her arms and reached for the shampoo bottle, pushing all thoughts of a possible watcher aside. Which only served to shift them right back onto the subject of how she was apparently some kind of fickle, heartless bitch.

Logically, she knew it was some form of survivor’s guilt. Thor had invested so much into her, had come to rescue her when he thought she was in trouble, had embarked on a risky undertaking that resulted in his death because she had managed to get possessed by some huge cosmic force. And here she was disregarding his sacrifice by going on living and not even having the grace to return the feelings that had led him to his fate.

_No!_ She glared at the tiles in front of her face like they were accusing her. _No, I refuse to do this to myself!_ He was a grown adult! He made his own decisions, and if he cared so much he should have stopped by to visit rather than spy on her. She probably wouldn’t have stumbled on the Aether if he had - she’d have stayed in New Mexico working on her calculations for an Einstein-Rosen bridge and simply emailed Erik to keep up with his research in London. And she might have gotten to know him enough to have an idea of whether or not their relationship had a future. It said a lot that she knew more about Loki than Thor, and he hadn’t exactly been open and forthcoming. And it’s not like returning his feelings would make him any less dead, anyway.

Who would really judge her for not mourning adequately (other than herself of course)? Odin hated her already, Thor’s friends would probably forget she existed, Darcy would roll with the situation, Erik would actually be relieved that she wasn’t involved with someone who brought danger into their lives, SHIELD had bigger concerns, and Loki… well, who knows what he thinks about anything, but he hadn’t got angry when she vented about Thor last night.

Rinsing out the last of the shampoo, she stepped out the shower and towelled herself off, mind made up. _I am not going to feel guilty over Thor._ Easier said than done.

Darcy was waiting for her just outside the door. “I’ve set him up with a variety of breakfast options for him to pretend to sneer at while secretly liking,” she told Jane as she stepped into the bathroom for her own shower.

Jane nodded and ducked into the bedroom to dig through her clothes for an outfit to wear to the end of the world. However, not being much of a follower of fashion, if _Vogue_ had ever done an article on What To Wear For The Apocalypse, she’d missed it. Best go with her usual flannel shirt and jeans combination. Everybody would be looking at Loki anyway.

Venturing back into the main room she found Ian in front of the TV watching the news, and Loki at the table poking at a bowl of Shreddies with his spoon as if refusing to believe they were edible. An empty plate bearing a puddle of syrup suggested he’d already consumed a pile of pancakes. He’d put pants on, but was still shirtless. Jane wondered what he was going to wear, considering the upper half of his clothing had holes in it.

“You’re supposed to put milk on that,” she pointed out helpfully. He looked up, confused.

“Here,” she grabbed the milk that Darcy had left beside him - really, you’d think that combined with the picture on the box would have been enough to clue him in - and poured its contents over the cereal. He glared at her. “Don’t look at me like that. That’s how you’re supposed to eat it. Let the milk sink in for a bit and then try it.”

He dug the spoon in and lifted up a mouthful of cereal, still looking sceptical, but ate it all the same. Having established that it was edible, he continued eating without prompting. Jane was still amazed that there were no marks from his injury. Realising she was staring again, she fled to the safety of the couch to watch the news with Ian.

The main story seemed to be some political scandal or other, but she kept alert for anything that could possibly be related to the Convergence or Malekith, which seemed to be every other story. A dragon had been sighted flying over Aberystwyth, with witnesses claiming it had swooped down and snatched up a sheep before leaving again. There was an 8 year old girl who had vanished after claiming she was “going to Narnia”. And an anti-austerity protest had vanished from the route they were marching and wound up reappearing along Downing Street, unable to believe their luck, and the resulting standoff with police was still ongoing. The news was desperately trying to find logical explanations for it all, of course, but it was pretty obvious that there was something weird going on.

She managed to watch for several minutes before giving in to the temptation to look back over towards the table. He was just finishing off what seemed to be a second bowl of cereal. Still not sated, he grabbed a slice of toast and began to butter it. Did everyone on Asgard have a bottomless pit for a stomach? Then again, he wasn’t actually from Asgard, was he?

Seeing the coffee cup next to him reminded her that she still hadn’t had any that morning, and she got up to get herself some. Normally she couldn’t even function before she’d had a cup or two; it was amazing she hadn’t fallen back asleep. When she looked up from the coffeemaker, she saw Loki looking hopefully at her, mouth full of toast, holding out his own cup. She brought the pot over to fill it up again. At least he knew better than to throw it on the floor. She returned the pot to its place on the machine, and resumed her place on the couch. Aah, sweet sweet caffeine!

Loki joined her a few moments later, bearing his own coffee and a plate of buttered toast. He placed them both on the table and sat in the space next to her.

“Are you still not finished?”

“Actually I am. That is for you. A single bowl of those small squares cannot possibly be enough to sustain you for the battle ahead. Now, eat.”

She wanted to object and point out that she wasn’t exactly going to be engaging in hand-to-hand combat with Dark Elves, but it wasn’t worth it. And it was kind of nice of him, even if she resented being ordered about like that. She dutifully began to eat the toast, while watching as Loki pulled various items of clothing from the - pretty big – how many clothes can one person wear? - pile on the floor. First up was a black long-sleeved shirt; he frowned at the hole through the middle, and wrinkled his nose at the bloodstains. She was about to ask whether he wanted a needle and thread (she was sure her mom had a sewing kit somewhere), but then he touched the damaged area of fabric, and she saw the pale green light of his magic again. The hole sealed, and the bloodstains faded until it was barely visible against the black. Next came a leather sleeveless tunic; again the flash of magic to repair the damage. Then there was a breastplate; since it ended just above the point where he got stabbed, its only damage was some scoring to the bottom edge, and Loki strapped it on without needing to fix anything. Next up was a complex long-sleeved leather tunic made up of interweaving strips of leather and green fabric, with a patch of metal plating to match his pants, and lined in green; like the previous garments, this too had a hole at the front and back, but unlike those the damage would be visible, and he seemed to take more care with this one. Having pulled that on, he reached for the final item – the sleeveless coat with metal plating; at least this only had one hole in it. More magic, and the strapping on of some arm and wrist armour, and at least he was dressed. And they say women take ages getting ready.

He picked up his coffee from the table and drained the rest of the cup, looking over to see that she had obeyed his instructions to eat, and nodding in satisfaction when he saw she had. He then turned to the TV, watching the news curiously.

Erik finally stumbles in, fully dressed – thankfully! – but apparently not fully awake. He shuffled over to the coffeemaker, poured the last of the pot’s contents into a mug, and sat down at the table, helping himself to the remaining few slices of toast in the toastrack. Jane waited until he’d got through half his coffee, before clearing her throat.

“OK, guys, strategy meeting?” Everyone turned to look at her expectantly. “Right, Erik. You said Greenwich, but do you have a more precise location than that? We don’t have enough equipment to cover the whole of Greenwich.”

He got up and walked over to his computer, peered at some calculations, and typed something. “It seems to be centered on the Old Royal Naval College, near the river.”

“That’s good enough. Right, Darcy, Ian? You guys need to install the transmitters at key points around the site. Erik and I will find a spot with a good view where we can direct things from. Loki, you and anyone else who turns up will be on Malekith. Kick his ass, or failing that at least keep him too busy fighting for him to be able to take advantage of the Convergence. Everybody good?”

*******************************************************************

The drive to Greenwich is silent. Jane is terrified someone will spot the would-be world conqueror in the passenger seat or that they’d get pulled over by the police for the state of the car, Loki is busy peering out the broken windows at the city, Erik is too scared of Loki to talk, Darcy is listening to something on her iPod, and Ian doesn’t seem to be inclined to talk much anyway, as far as she had observed so far. Luckily it’s not too long a drive.

They get out and start unloading equipment. Weirdly they don’t seem to be attracting much attention from passersby, despite Loki standing right there. A few raised eyebrows at the state of the car, but nothing else. He sees her confused look and correctly interprets it. “Magic, my dear Jane. They do not see me.”

“Huh, neat trick. OK, I’d better be off. So, uh, good luck.” Impulsively she hugged him; he stiffened. Oh, shit. Awkward. “Erm, gotta go!”

She ran off in the direction of the entrance to the building with access to the tower she’d picked out as a good spot, Erik following her.

“Jane, what were you thinking hugging that monster?”

“I get that you’re pissed at me but can we do this later? Assuming there is a later anyway. And if there isn’t, it’d be a waste of time talking about it now, so… never mind, OK?”

They reached the tower and looked out at the square. She was right, this had an excellent view. She could see a couple of the gravimetric spikes from here. People seemed to be eyeing them curiously, but thankfully not interfering with them, probably figuring they were a science project by some of the students. Loki was leaning against a pillar near where they’d left him; he waved at her, and she waved back.

Suddenly screaming could be heard from the direction of the river, followed by a loud rumbling noise. Looks like Malekith had arrived. She really, really hoped this worked.


	6. Chapter 6

Loki heard mortals screaming (not due to him, this time) and looked in the direction of the ruckus to see people fleeing a disturbance in the waters of the nearby river, caused by apparently nothing… until a slight blurry shape became visible, revealing a Dark Elf ship. Of course Thor hadn’t discovered that particular function.

He watched as it gouged a path through the ground before eventually coming to a stop, and made his way towards it, as fleeing mortals ran past him, not paying him any attention even though he had dropped the illusions hiding him. He conjured his battle armour and cloak as he walked, but left off his helmet; it looked impressive and intimidating, but was more a hindrance than anything against a real foe. In the sky above him, a portal began to open. This was it. The fate of the universe, and the task of vengeance for Frigga’s death, lay on his shoulders. The Norns must be laughing at their jest. Well, let them laugh. He was Loki, and he did what he wanted. And what he wanted, right now, was the death of the creature that was responsible for the loss of his mother and brother.

“MALEKITH!” he called across the courtyard. “How lovely to see you again. You ran off so fast the last time!”

Malekith, who had been looking up at the portal forming above, turned to watch his approach.

“You needn’t have come so far, Jotun. Death would have come to you soon enough.”

“What can I say? I’m impatient.” He gave a mocking bow.

“Your universe was never meant to be. Your world, and your family, will be extinguished.” He fired a stream of the Aether at Loki, throwing him back, though the hasty shield he threw up just in time prevented any damage.

“Already tried that!” he snapped, quickly getting to his feet and throwing a dagger, which got thrown aside by another blast of Aether, which knocked him down again. Damn, he knew it had been naïve to hope, but he had been looking to rely on his knives. Blasting someone with magic was incredibly draining. This is precisely why he preferred to use his magic in battle for misdirection only, and let Thor handle the mighty smiting of foes. No sooner had he found his feet than he was again felled, this time his shield disintegrated under the onslaught and only his quick reflexes bringing his arms up in time saved his face from total ruin from the sharp slivers of Aether, though a line of pain along one cheek suggested one had hit. This was becoming humiliating.

This time he was able to get to his feet. “All that power at your disposal, and that is really the best you can do?”

As he’d expected, Malekith reacted to his defiance by forming a large cloud to blast at him, giving him an opening to strike out with his own power, knocking the elf back through a column and into a line of cars. _Enjoy a taste of your own medicine._

He made to go after him to press his advantage, but found his way blocked for a group of Dark Elves. He snarled with impatience. Time spent fighting these flunkies would give Malekith recovery time. Then a ripple hit the group and several elves disappeared. Ah, Jane’s plan worked then. He quickly dashed through the gap left before those remaining realised what had happened, pulling one of the grenades he’d picked up on Svartalfheim out of storage and throwing it behind him to prevent any pursuit.

The slight delay had been enough for Malekith to recover, and he greeted Loki with another blast of Aether, but he was ready this time and ducked under the streams, before striking with magic, shoving Malekith backwards a few paces… into thin air. There’d been no ripple this time, so a naturally forming portal. He started forward after Malekith, only to have the elf unexpectedly step back into form right in front of him and punch him. The strength lent by the Aether and Loki not being braced for impact meant the strike was enough to send him several feet back into a car.

Humiliated, Loki dived at his foe, who apparently hadn’t expected such a direct attack as he failed to brace himself, and the momentum carried them… onto a hillside in Svartalfheim, along with several of the surrounding cars. They rolled down the ashy slope, which turned out to be at the top of a cliff… then suddenly they were back on Midgard, but still plummeting toward the hard, unforgiving ground, and for a moment Loki saw, not the grey cityscape, but empty blackness dotted with distant stars and nebulae… before he slammed into the unforgiving rock where _he_ waited to dole out something far beyond pain – nonono! – hold on, not rock, but cinders! They were on the ravaged landscape of Svartalfheim, not a broken moon on the far edge of the universe. _Pull yourself together, Loki, you coward! You have a fight to win._

Not being subject to such anguish, Malekith was quicker to recover, hitting him with another blast of Aether and sending him sprawling. Marching over, he punched the back of Loki’s head to smash his face on the ground… but instead of his face being forced into the dirt, they both fell through the air again, slamming into the sloping roof of an oddly-shaped building. He desperately scrabbled for purchase on the smooth glass panels, not caring how ridiculous he looked to the mortals within. He felt Malekith grabbing at his cloak, whether in an attempt to pull him down or out of desperate need to grab onto something, he didn’t know. _Please no no no! Don’t let me fall! I didn’t mean it, father!_

Falling towards the ground, he futilely flailed his arms, as if it would somehow check his momentum and divert him through the windows… and crashed into the icy ground of Jotunheim, fortunately just missing a cliff edge. Not one of his favourite realms, but it still felt like a paradise at this second. He and Malekith got up to face one another, but before either of them could strike, a roar echoed around the crags, and a huge beast of some kind leapt towards them. They both managed to duck out of its way, but its impact against the ground on which they’d been standing was enough to break the chunk of ice off and send them all tumbling into the abyss. Falling, always falling…

…and the relief of landing, and not falling endlessly through emptiness. He picked himself up and looked around him. He was inside somewhere, in front of him a line of carriages emblazoned with the sign ‘Underground’ were just coming to a halt. Behind him on the wall, a sign of a similar design proclaimed ‘London Bridge’, which was evidently a place name. So, transportation. Further down to platform, mortals waited to embark. Oddly, they didn’t pay him much heed. There was no sign of Malekith.

The doors in front of him slid open, and several mortals disembarked, paying him no more attention than those waiting had. He would have almost assumed that he’d put on an illusion without thinking, if not for a girl inside the carriage taking photos on her phone with a stunned expression.

“Excuse me, how do I get to Greenwich from here?” So far it seemed the portals had ejected him in the same city - he was certain he had glimpsed that strange glass building from Jane’s window that morning, and the name on the tunnel wall seemed to confirm his location. Hopefully it would be the case, otherwise he had better hope that SHIELD had arrived in his absence and could handle matters. Or possibly Malekith had remained on Jotunheim and fallen to an icy demise.

The woman in front of him blinked in surprise, but responded calmly, as if she gave directions to attempted world conquerors all the time. “Take this train, three stops.”

“Thank you.” He climbed aboard. He saw some nervous looks from people further down the carriage, and a few more people recording him on their phones, but there didn’t seem to be any kind of panic. While it would have been irritating being in an enclosed space with terrified mortals, he did have to wonder what was wrong with them.

There was a lurch, and they were moving. The speed was quick enough, but he still chafed at the time taken, imagining Malekith unleashing destruction upon the Nine Realms while he was stuck in a metal box underground. People got on and off at the stations they passed, with the new people exhibiting no more extreme reactions than he had seen already. A curious small child even pulled at his coat, before being dragged further down the carriage by her mother. Eventually, finally, came a sign on the wall saying ‘Greenwich’, and he leapt off as soon as the doors opened, scattering people who had gathered round waiting to get on.

The platform was crowded with people. Some were getting up and making ready to leave, but many remained, evidently having simply fled underground for shelter and not inclined to move elsewhere when they had found somewhere this secure. He couldn’t fault them in this case – if Malekith won, it wouldn’t matter how far they ran. They looked at him more fearfully than the others, having observed for themselves that something was going on, and recognising Loki as being involved somehow. He wound through the crowd, down a passageway and up some moving stairs, following the signs to the exit. The gates required passes of some kind that he obviously did not have, but he vaulted them easily, with only a token protest from a nearby guard.

He reached ground level to be was greeted with a huge swirling black cloud, tendrils of which were snaking into the portals above. Oh, Valhalla. Not only had Malekith made it back before him, there hadn’t been anybody to challenge him. He heard his name being called, and turned to see Jane and Selvig running towards him.

“We’re too late,” she said, bleakly.

“The Convergence is at its peak,” added Selvig, seemingly too distracted by their current predicament to be scared of Loki.

“Those things stop it though, yes?” he asked, indicating the metal sticks in Selvig’s hands.

“Not from here,” explained Jane. “We can’t get close enough.”

“I can, and I will.” He snatched the sticks from Selvig and ran into the cloud. He was not going to give into the despair that had consumed them, he refused to allow things to end like this, and he was going to avenge his mother and brother’s deaths if he died in the attempt.

The swirling miasma impeded his progress, battering at him and disorienting him. Fighting his way through the storm, he spied Malekith at the centre, his arms raised, casting the power of the Aether throughout the Nine Realms.

“Malekith!” he screamed.

The elf turned to face him. If he had any reaction to Loki’s presence, it was impossible to discern through the gloom, though his voice, when he responded, was flat and devoid of expression. “Darkness returns, Jotun. Have you come to witness the end of your universe?”

“No. The only thing ending today will be you.” He hurled one of the poles like a spear. Malekith caught it, looking contemptuous, clearly thinking he had foiled Loki. _Fool._ If Loki had learned anything from the battle of New York it was ‘If something fired at you starts beeping, DROP IT IMMEDIATELY.’ Ignorant of this rule, Malekith failed to drop the device in favour of sneering, until it was activated and his right arm disappeared. Just his arm? Well, he had two more devices; he had better make them count.

He flung the second contraption. Distracted by his missing right arm, Malekith failed to catch it this time and it slammed into his left shoulder. Loki cursed, he had been aiming for the chest, but the whirlwind of Aether was difficult to compensate for when judging throwing angle. Loki had no idea how Jane could tell from her machine that there had been a hit, but she was certainly quick to react to it, and the elf’s left arm vanished. Aether poured from his sockets like smoke escaping a chimney, forming the shape of arms.

“You think you can stop this? The Aether cannot be destroyed!” As if that was the only way of stopping him; he was arrogant enough to forget that the Aether needed a host, and that he was the weak link.

“I know.” Clenching his free hand, he ran towards the Dark Elf, not wanting to risk missing, however good his aim was and however much he felt he’d adjusted for the conditions. Launching himself into the air, he made to drive the weapon down into Malekith’s heart, raising an arm ready to hammer it in with his fist… when Mjolnir slammed into his palm. Without thinking, he used it to drive the device home, the force sending Malekith flying back into the base of his ship. Unused to the impact, Loki was flung backwards, stunned. He distantly, as if it were happening far away, felt the ripple of the final device being activated, and thought he heard Malekith’s bellow of rage being suddenly cut off. There was silence, and then noise, and frantic cries, and then someone frantically pulling at his arm, and then someone lying on top of him – Jane, his mind supplied - and then silence once more.

He felt her sit up, and fought his way back to full consciousness, not wishing her to move away from him. He tried to put his arm around her, and realised that he was still holding Mjolnir. This shocked him back to full wakefulness, and he almost flung Jane off in his hurry to sit up. Looking down at his right hand, he confirmed that yes, he was indeed holding Thor’s hammer.

“Hey, how come you have Mew-Mew?” So the other two mortals had survived the batt- What did she just call it?

Jane tapped it curiously with a finger. “You said only Thor could lift it.”

“As far as I knew, that is true. You have to be worthy to wield it.”

“Oh well I guess that explains it.”

He didn’t, but he was too tired to argue with her. Looking around, he could see that the area was littered with debris, but there was no sign of the Aether, or any Dark Elves. Or the ship, come to that. He pieced together the snatches of evidence that had filtered through to him. The ship had become unbalanced, and was falling. Someone had tried to drag him out of the way, found themselves unable, and remained with him. He frowned at Jane. Surely she wasn’t willing to risk her life for him? Though whatever her motives, he was sure that her actions had saved his life. Erik was holding the device controlling the portals, and would certainly not have stirred himself to send the ship away when it was coming down on Loki’s head.

As seemed to be usual, the silence was broken by Darcy. “So anybody notice anything missing? Like, where the hell are SHIELD?”

Everybody looked around, as if expecting SHIELD agents to pop out from behind columns.

“They can’t have ignored a phonecall like that, right? I mean I get them ignoring my calls, but a guy who brought a bunch of aliens down on New York calls up saying he’s got a hostage and warning there’s gonna be another army, you at least check it out.”

Loki snorted, “They are lucky I was not trying to win when I was here last.”

“Wait, hold on-” she cut herself off as the sound of sirens pierced the air. “We should probably get out of here.”

Loki nodded and got to his feet, pulling Jane up with him. “I have no wish to endure their tedious questions.”

They started in the direction of the car, which was hopefully still working and not buried under rubble or on another realm.

“Are you just going to leave that there?” asked Jane, indicating Mjolnir.

He thought for a moment. “No.”

Picking the hammer up, he walked to the spot where the Dark Elf ship had stood, and placed it down on the ground there. “I have no use for it, and as you said, it makes a good monument.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \- I changed the Underground station Loki lands in so that it makes some kind of geographical sense. To get to Greenwich from Charing Cross Thor would have had to change lines 3 times, & even then the nearest station (Cutty Sark) is still a few streets away from the battle site, & is DLR, not underground. So I've chosen to alter the Jubilee line slightly so it swings via this fictional Greenwich Tube station instead of Canary Wharf. The people's reaction to Thor showing up is a spot-on representation of Tube travellers though, so I kept that in.
> 
> \- Mjolnir being left in Greenwich as a monument is something that actually happened - [well, sort of](http://www.theestablishingshot.com/2014/02/see-thors-hammer-mjolnir-thor-dark.html).


	7. Chapter 7

**_BREAKING NEWS: UNKNOWN ARMY RAMPAGES THROUGH LONDON_ **

Darcy and Ian had left as soon as they’d got home, after Ian had stopped trying to eat Darcy’s face for long enough to declare that he knew a “really great pub” that was “just down the road” where they could celebrate. While the invitation was ostensibly offered to all of them, it was pretty obvious that he was hoping for some time alone with Darcy, so she declined, as did Erik and Loki. Erik, now almost alone with Loki and not wanting to spend any more time in his company than necessary, quickly made his excuses and left.

She’d pulled a bottle of wine out of the drinks cabinet, and now she and Loki were sat on the couch, sipping glasses of it while watching the news reporting on the battle. She normally wasn’t the sort of person to get drunk, but if this occasion didn’t call for a drink or two (or three) then what did? She could simultaneously celebrate and try to erase some of the events from the past few days. Odin’s contempt. Her fear of what the Aether would do to her. Frigga’s death. Her culpability in that. Thor’s death. Her lack of feeling over Thor’s death. Her attraction to Loki, despite all that he’d done. Erik’s disappointment at her spending time with Loki, and how irrational it was to resent him for it, given his experiences.

Loki had been pretty quiet and subdued since the ride home, not really reacting much to the news. He seemed distracted. Maybe this was normal post-battle behaviour with Asgardians for all she knew.

“Hey,” she said.

He looked up from his wineglass, which he’d been staring into without seeming to see it. “Yes?”

“Are you OK? You’ve been quiet.”

“I am quite well. I have never been one for the sort of raucous celebrations that are customary on Asgard after a victory, and too much has been lost on the path to this one for me to revel much.”

She moved closer to him. “OK, but if you want to talk to someone, I’m here.”

He fidgeted, nervously. “When Thor destroyed the Bifrost, I fell. I plummeted through space, through emptiness, lost and alone with only distant stars for scenery, unable to tell what was truly up or down. I prayed for an end to it, by any means, but when I touched the ground again, something far worse awaited me.” He paused for a moment, looking like he wasn’t sure if he wanted to continue, but pressing on all the same. “During the battle I- I- I was falling and falling and whenever it seemed like I was going to hit the ground, it would disappear and I would keep falling, before landing just long enough to catch my breath, and then falling again.”

He stopped, breathing heavily. She wondered if he was about to have a panic attack. Not sure what to say, she settled herself against his side and put her arms round him.

Calming himself, he drank the rest of the wine in his glass, though Jane doubted it would have any effect on him. He put it down in the table in front of him, and then sank back into her arms. “It was bad enough being thrown out of the ship, but at least that was just a moment, and I had landed before I truly had a chance to think about it, and had the chance to recover a moment or two with only Fandral’s mockery as a price.”

“Thor threw you out of the ship?”

“Yes,” he said wryly. “You were unconscious at the time, so you missed that particular bit of fun. He opened the door and pushed me out, trusting Fandral to catch me, and then jumped straight after with you in his arms.”

“Couldn’t he just have told you that you needed to jump?”

“I may have been yelling at him. As far as I could see we were about to be caught, and I knew exactly who would bear the harshest punishment for his folly.”

“Still seems a bit mean.”

They both sat in silence for a moment, the conversation having moved dangerously close to ‘speaking ill of the dead’, which Jane didn’t like doing, and apparently neither did Loki – at least in this case. Wanting a distraction, she turned back to the TV, watching people trying to make sense of what had happened.

She felt a little guilty at bailing. Even though the invasion was over, the lack of information was driving people into a panic, if the news was any indication. What were those things? Why did they attack? Were there more of them? Why was the guy who tried to take over the world last year apparently defending them? Was he defending them? Should they be worried that he was free? Where was he now? Where were the Avengers?

At least with the Chitauri invasion the news organisations had had sources to focus on - Stark Industries, SHIELD, the National Guard and the NYPD had all held press conferences the moment the dust settled to discuss their own parts in the situation - and people could see recognisably heroic figures like Captain America and Iron Man, even if they had no clue who the others were.

Here, the only recognisable figure who seemed to be helping was a known villain, and nobody official had anything helpful to say. The Prime Minister had made a statement, but via a spokesperson and filled with vague reassurances. A physicist had been wheeled out in the hope that he could explain the portals, but he had mostly just used a lot of long, very scientific words to say that he had no idea. All the reporters could do was run any footage they could get their hands on – blurry photos, grainy CCTV, shaky phone videos and the occasional bit here and there from someone with a decent camera or camcorder who had managed to get close enough – and interview any eyewitnesses they could find, while speculating endlessly. About why Loki was defending them, about whether that meant he had had a change of heart, about what the hell had attacked them and why, about why the portals formed. But mostly about her.

So much for their hasty exit – she was clearly visible in several of the photos and videos, and it was obvious she was involved somehow, running around fiddling with weird equipment instead of running away. Even though Erik had been with her the whole time, somehow he’d managed to dodge the cameras throughout, always managing to be behind something or out of shot. Someone would eventually determine he’d been there, but for now he was in the clear and the focus was on her. Being in constant movement and having long hair had made it hard for anyone to get a good shot of her face, but one of the more professional photographers had managed to get her when she’d been standing next to Loki looking into the black cloud of Aether. It was still a little distant, and very blurry on the cropped, zoomed-in version, but it was only a matter of time before the police realised it was the same woman who had been whisked away by Thor just a few days ago.

And then, they broke off from interviewing several people who had shared a tube journey with Loki (“’e were dead polite. No trouble at all.” “Just stood there waiting for his stop like everyone else.”) to play a blurry video that “one of our viewers has just sent in” of her running towards Loki and throwing herself on top of him, and the media seemed to lose their minds entirely. They’d reluctantly (and rather confusedly) accepted that Loki was, based on current evidence, the hero of the hour, and a few people had even knocked up banners saying “THANK YOU LOKI” that they waved in the background of news reports, but this? The reporters suddenly had a new angle to cover: Loki’s mystery girlfriend.

Groaning, she burrowed into his side, hiding her face as if the people on the TV could somehow look out and see her.

“Hmm. So I didn’t imagine that. You are quite insane, my dear Jane.” She pressed her face harder against him, but he sat up and pushed her away from him slightly, looking down at her curiously. “Why do you carry on so? Do you not want recognition for your deeds?”

“No! Yes! I don’t know! It’s just kinda overwhelming! I’m used to people not knowing who I am, except for a few physicists who think I’m crazy. All I really wanted was for people to accept my theories about wormholes.”

“Which you have most assuredly done today, opening and closing portals at will. If anyone still had doubts after seeing a portal over New York, then those misgivings must surely have been laid to rest.”

“It’s just that I don’t know if I want to be in the spotlight.”

“No. You will share in the glory, such as it is anyway. And did you not fear that SHIELD would try to lock you away? Surely it will be harder for them to do so with everyone’s eyes upon you?”

She sighed. “I guess. I still don’t understand why they didn’t show up to the fight. I mean even if they were in a different part of Greenwich that Dark Elf ship was pretty obvious; they should have been able to make it in time to stop us leaving.”

“They would not even have had to wait for the Dark Elves to show up. They have the means to search through any device with a camera and detect the faces of those they seek. I made sure that my illusion was not sufficient to hide me from electronic devices for that very reason, to give them time to determine my location. I used this to my advantage last year, when I wished to allow myself to be captured. I wandered around the centre of Stuttgart for some time before I made my move, ensuring that I was on camera multiple times, in order to be sure that I had their attention, and sampled the local ales to give them time to get there. They should have detected our arrival and already been on their way to engage us by the time Malekith arrived.”

“OK. So… what? They weren’t there at all? They ignored an apparently genuine threat warning of an invasion? Why? If I didn’t know any better I’d suspect it was deliberate. Actually, I _don’t_ know any better. But why? To cause chaos? They’re supposed to be defending the earth! Not sitting back and seeing what happens!”

“Whatever their motives, whether they be malice or ignorance, sitting back and seeing what happens is exactly what they have done. The more pressing question is what will they do now they can no longer claim ignorance and action will be expected on their part?”

He had a point. If they had deliberately ignored Loki’s warning for some reason (probably assuming he would kill his ‘hostage’ and nobody would believe his word anyway) then they would try to silence them all. If it had been sabotage by someone who should have passed on the message, then that person or group of people would make all the more effort to shut them up in order to preserve their cover. If it had been incompetence, then it was 50/50 whether they would have them killed in a convenient accident to avoid damaging SHIELD’s image - she couldn’t see ignoring a threat going down well with the Avengers - or grudgingly congratulated for handling it without them and firmly told to forget about their ineptitude as a spy agency.

Something occurred to her and she frowned up at him. “What about you? Even if they have a good excuse for why they’re so late to the party and don’t try to kill me or lock me up, will they be that generous to you, even though you saved the universe today?”

“I know not, but it does not matter. They are no threat to me, and I have no plans to stay.”

“Oh.” Of course she’d known he wouldn’t stick around, but a part of her had still hoped.

“What is it?”

“It’s just that… I was kinda hoping you’d stay.” She hid behind her hair, embarrassed by how clingy she sounded. Of course he didn’t want to stick around just to keep her company.

“I am not sure I would feel welcome here. But…” he trailed off, looking uncertain.

“But what?” she prompted.

“You could come with me.” He said that in a rush, like he had to force the words out quickly or he wouldn’t get them out at all.

“Where?”

“Anywhere. You could travel the stars. Visit other worlds. Truly study the universe.”

She sat there for a moment, trying to process what he was offering her. He shifted nervously.

“You really want me to come with you?”

“Yes. I find I… do not mind your company.”

She thought of the possibilities. She had the opportunity to study and work on her theories unrestricted by the limited tools and resources she had on Earth! Just think about the amount of knowledge there was out there! She’d barely had the chance to look around the library on Asgard, and her brief glimpse was enough for her to have an idea that there was so much for her to learn about the universe. She could scrabble around for ages on Earth wasting her time working things out through trial and error that were probably the equivalent of Kindergarten-level science on other worlds! And nothing would help more than actually seeing portals in action – travelling from Svartalfheim to Earth through the doorway caused by the Convergence had been totally unlike travelling to Asgard using the Bifrost, and she itched to know _why_ , and if travelling through the naturally occurring portals that Loki knew of were different still (of all the times to fall unconscious!).

And what better company to be in than Loki, who knew so much about the universe, and could show her things she had ever even imagined, and had magic that she itched to be able to understand.

She came back to herself to find him looking at her apprehensively. “Of course I understand if-”

“Of course I want to come with you!”

He smiled with relief. “I am glad to hear it.”

“When do you want to go?”

“I think the sooner we leave the better, before SHIELD eventually arrive, as they undoubtedly will. It would not be difficult for me to extricate us from their clutches should they have ill intentions, but it would be best to avoid it entirely.”

“Yeah, definitely best. Bad enough I wrecked my mom’s car; don’t really want to destroy her apartment as well.”

Looking around the apartment, she caught sight of the confusion still playing out on the TV screen and bit her lip. She owed someone an explanation. She and Loki were the only people who really knew what was going on. Darcy knew the basics, but she only knew what Jane had told her about Malekith and had no grasp on the science. Ian was probably still trying to get a handle on the idea that this was pretty normal for them, and Erik… Well Erik had trouble explaining himself properly. But how? She didn’t have the clout to call a press conference, and she didn’t fancy humiliating herself on live TV. She supposed she could just send Loki out to a public place and let him handle explanations, allowing word to spread through word of mouth and the phones everybody would be recoding his speech on, but people weren’t 100% sure how to feel about him and it could do more harm than good if some people decided to mete out mob justice, or someone sent in a SWAT team.

The newsreaders, evidently stuck for things to say, began to read out a selection of tweets posted about the story. That’s when the obvious solution hit Jane. Why go to the trouble of seeking out a platform to tell her story and let people know what had happened when should could just write everything she wanted to say, post it, and let everyone else spread it and bring it to the attention of the media without her having to publicly demonstrate her lack of social skills or face down any nosy reporters.

Where though? Twitter was out – she wanted it to spread and that wasn’t going to happen if people had to retweet the 500 separate posts it would take to explain things. Facebook was a bad idea – her identity being found out was inevitable, but she still wanted to try staying anonymous. Besides, she only had 35 friends, all of whom used the site even less than she did, so it stood no chance of being seen. She didn’t have a blog or website and didn’t feel like taking the time to set one up. She knew nothing about Tumblr other than that Darcy spent a lot of time on it looking at pictures of cats.

Reddit would be good enough. She only used it for arguing about science and astronomy topics so there shouldn’t be anything too obvious in her posting history that’d give her away, and at the same time it gave her some evidence of expertise. There was probably already a forum for discussing the battle. She’d post something, and with luck it would attract enough attention that it would show up on the main front page, and people would see it, link to it elsewhere, and hopefully it’d attract enough attention for the mainstream media to cover it.

“Hang on. I have to do something before I go. I might not want the spotlight, but people deserve to know what happened. And if SHIELD do try to spin it in some sort of twisted way to make you look like the bad guy, at least there’ll be something giving your side of the story.”

She went over to her computer and opened up the browser, Loki looking on curiously. She was right – there was a forum just for discussing the invasion. Barely an hour old and it already had thousands of subscribers. Good. After thinking carefully for a few moments she began to type.

 

_**Hi! I’m the brown-haired woman in all the photos and videos. Please read this if you want to know what happened today.** _

_To start with, the portals randomly appearing was part of a phenomenon called the Convergence, which takes places every few thousand years when the worlds align in a particular way, causing he borders between them to become a little blurred. With the help of a colleague, I developed a device that could manipulate the effects of the Convergence and open portals at will._

_The invaders were Dark Elves from the realm of Svartalfheim. Their leader was called Malekith. He wanted to use a magical artefact called the Aether to alter the universe into a nightmare hellscape that would be uninhabitable for pretty much anything not a Dark Elf. He and his army are dead, and AFAIK they’re the last of their kind, so there shouldn’t be a second wave or anything like that. Then again, until a few days ago Asgard were insisting the Dark Elves had been wiped out millennia ago, so I don’t want to make any promises. Still, he was only here because this spot was the best place to launch the Aether from, so even if there are more hidden away somewhere, there’s no reason for them to come back._

_This is something that I hate to be the one to say, but: Thor is dead. I know a lot of people won’t want to believe it, but I saw it happen. I’m sorry. He died on Svartalfheim trying to prevent Malekith getting his hands on the Aether. If it’s any consolation to anyone, he fought really bravely, and it seemed pretty quick._

_Yes, that was Loki fighting today. Yes, the same one who brought the aliens last year. He’s been in prison since then, and Thor let him out because he knew he could help, and he has. Don’t ask me what was up with him – he won’t even talk about it, but I get the idea that there was more going on there and he wasn’t really trying to take over the world. FWIW, Thor’s hammer is only supposed to be able to be lifted by someone who is worthy. Not sure how ‘worthiness’ is decided, but it responded to Loki today and came to him from where it had been left on Svartalfheim, so I guess that counts for something._

_I don’t know where the Avengers were. As soon as I worked out where Malekith was going to strike, I did get in contact with a shadowy government agency who shall remain nameless, who do know how to contact the Avengers. But nothing happened. I don’t know if they ignored the phone call, or didn’t care and didn’t pass the info on. I doubt the Avengers would have ignored a threat though, so I really think the message never got to them._

_Please pass this along, because there’s no information out there so I want people to know what happened._

 

She was about to click ‘post’, until it occurred to her that it might be a good idea to offer some sort of proof. But what- Oh, wait! Grabbing her phone, she walked back over to Loki.

“OK, try not to look too menacing.” She tried to angle and frame it just so as to have the background look as generic and unidentifiable as possible.

“What are you doing?”

“Well, the downside of using a medium where anyone can say anything to make my statement, is that anyone can say anything. Sure people will eventually realise that my story fits, but in the meantime it’ll just cause more confusion while people question it and pick it apart. So… proof!”

“And why is this proof just me? Did I not say that you should also share in the glory for this victory?”

“But I don’t want people to know who I am!”

“They will find out eventually. There are too many images showing you already, and I understand that you had encountered law enforcement while investigating the Convergence. Someone will eventually put 2 and 2 together. If not that, someone may remember an old man rambling about trying to save the universe, while carrying equipment similar to what you used during the battle, and quickly discover his connection to you. All that is assuming that SHIELD does not try to make your identity public, for some reason. Come, we will be worlds away by the time anyone identifies you. Why not reveal yourself?” He grinned up at her, devilishly.

She had to admit that he was right. Being cagey about her identity was just delaying the inevitable. And considering that SHIELD had stifled her research once it actually started going somewhere, she still had to endure the scientific community thinking she was crazy. This was a perfect opportunity to get back at all her detractors. _You guys think I’m a joke, huh? Well I just helped save the universe, so who’s laughing now?_

“You are totally a bad influence on me,” she muttered, sitting beside him and pressing the icon to switch the camera to selfie mode.

“Ok, so, smile?” _*click*_ “I guess that’ll do,” she said, eyeing the photo critically. Neither of them were blinking, Loki didn’t look pissed off and she’d managed to assume a facial expression that didn’t make her look insane. She went back over to the computer and transferred and uploaded the image, adding the link to the post.

Looking over what she’d written, she found herself reconsidering her sign-off. Might as well go all out seeing as her face was now attached to the post.

 _Signed, Dr Jane Foster, Astrophysicist_ , she added to the bottom.

“There. Now at least people will have some idea what happened. Assuming they believe me anyway.” She logged out of her account, closed the browser and switched off the computer.

Loki rose from the couch with his usual grace. “Do you have anything you wish to take with you?”

“Uh, yeah. I guess I could do with packing a few things. Do you mind waiting?”

“So long as you don’t take too long about it, but you are a practical sort, and I doubt you will dally over fripparies.”

She grabbed a backpack that she’d used as hand luggage on the plane ride over from the corner where she’d dumped it, and tried to think what she needed to pack. Clothes first, she thought, going into the bedroom and digging through her suitcase. No point taking too much – she had no idea what conditions or cultural mores she would need to dress for, but packing a few pairs of jeans and some practical shirts would be good. Remembering how dowdy she had felt when she had arrived in Asgard and seen all the shiny armour and colourful flowing fabric, she added a summery maxi dress that Darcy had bought her in an attempt to get her boss to – in her words – “wear something nice for a change” to the pile. Never know if she might be expected to dress up at some point. The long, loose shape sort of looked like the fashions in Asgard if you squinted. And it was green and gold; Loki would probably find that funny. Deodorant and a hairbrush would have to do for toiletries; she’d pick up the rest as she went.

What else would she need? Phone. It was highly unlikely she’d get signal on it anywhere else, but it was still useful to have it, so she fished out the solar charger so she could keep it running. She threw her passport in as well. Never know if she might end up back on earth but in some random country and need to get back home again. Wallet and keys to both this apartment and her lab in New Mexico too. No point travelling around the universe and then being completely stuck as soon as she set foot on her home planet.

Looking around, she couldn’t see anything else to take, so she arranged the gathered pile into the bag and took it back out to the living room, where she added the scanner she’d used to track anomalies, and the device for manipulating the portals. The phase meter was too bulky to take so she’d have to leave that. Finally she added her notebook and a pen.

That reminded her. She grabbed a piece of paper from the desk and scribbled out a quick note.

 

_Dear Darcy, Erik, Ian, mom and anybody else,_  
 _I’ve gone exploring the universe with Loki. Not sure when I’ll be back._  
 _\- Love you all, Jane_  
 _PS: Mom, sorry about the car._

 

She wondered if she should call her mom. This wasn’t something she should learn from a note. But what was she even supposed to say? _Hey, guess what, mom! I’m leaving the planet to go gallivanting across the universe with a guy who is exactly the sort of man you warned me about! Oh and by the way I’ve been lying to you for years about how I made that sudden breakthrough with my work and that’s how I got mixed up in this whole mess! Enjoy the rest of your vacation!_

Just as she was wondering if maybe she should at least try, Loki’s voice interrupted her thoughts.

“You are ready?”

She nodded, fastening the bag, before, then walking over to the coat rack and putting on her coat and shoes. She looked over at the TV, but Loki had already turned that off. “Ready when you are.”

“Then let us be off.”

At that moment there was a roaring and a blinding flash of light out on the terrace. She didn’t need Loki’s words to tell her what it was.

“The Bifrost.”


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey, look! A reasonably quick update that doesn't take a couple of weeks! Go, me! And a long chapter as well - ~10,000 words. I thought about splitting, but it'd break the pattern of alternating POV between chapters, & there didn't seem to be a point that I felt would make a good break. I had an absolute blast writing it, so I hope you guys do reading it!
> 
> It's nearing the end now, so I'm working flat out to get it all finished. I'm estimating that this will have one more chapter, possibly an epilogue too. But don't quote me on that as I suck at estimating chapter length & pacing until I'm actually in the middle of writing (see the length of this chapter as a perfect example).

When the light from the Bifrost had faded, Sif, Fandral and Volstagg were left standing on the balcony. Loki relaxed slightly, having expected a regiment of Einherjar, but not completely; their expressions conveyed grim purpose and he doubted it boded well for him.

Jane was much less suspicious, lacking his experiences with Thor’s friends, seeing them struggling to open the door, she hurried forward to unlock it and pull it open for them. Though he couldn’t fault her really; if she hadn’t, they’d only have smashed their way through.

“Hey, you guys are OK! I was worried you might have been hurt or punished!” She faltered when they failed to return her relieved greeting and stepped back away from them, moving closer to him, instinctively seeking his protection.

“We have been sent by the Allfather to bring you home,” said Sif, coldly, stepping forward.

He spat on the floor. “It is not my home. And for what purpose?”

“That is for him to tell you. We were simply sent to bring you, and we are not in any position to even question.”

“Yes, I suppose this is the second time you defied orders from your king, isn’t it? Must be terrible for you to actually face consequences this time round.”

She snarled at him. “You were no king!”

“I think you’ll find I was.”

Volstagg intervened. “Enough! We were sent to bring you, and we’ve been authorised to use force if you won’t come willingly. Are you going to come quietly?”

He frowned. He could fight them, but with three of them, and his magic reserves still low after the battle, he had less of an advantage than he’d like, and Jane could easily get hurt. Given their status there were surely more warriors waiting back at the Bifrost, ready to step in if it even looked as if they might fail. Not to mention Jane had expressed a wish for this place to remain undamaged. He could cast doubles and flee while they fought shadows, but if Odin sent troops to hunt them down, it would be much harder for him and Jane to get to the nearest pathway off Midgard.

He also admitted to some curiosity. Why did Odin wish to see him? If he was using such strongarm tactics, it probably wasn’t to offer congratulations, but then again he’d never had much of a knack for subtlety. And if he wished Loki dead, why bother with the formality of bringing Loki before him to do so, considering he had been more than clear at Loki’s ‘trial’ about what punishment he wanted to mete out? Unless he wished to make an example of his erstwhile son.

He would go along with them for now, but if he even got any indication of ill intent then he would flee and never look back. 

“Very well.” He walked toward the doorway, and they moved back to let him onto the balcony. Jane followed him.

Fandral coughed politely. “We were only sent to bring Loki, milady. It would be best if you stay here.”

“Tough. I’m coming along anyway.” She stepped up to him, and put her arms around him, clutching him tight, much to the consternation of the others, who weren’t used to anyone willingly touching Loki in such a manner, and were even more surprised when he returned the gesture. He smirked at their reactions. He opened his mouth to sneer at them, but his words were swallowed by the Bifrost opening.

He felt Jane shift against him, as she looked around and tried to take in as much as she could during the brief journey. She was grinning broadly when they landed, and squeezed him slightly before she let go, but the smile fell from her face when she saw the stern-looking welcoming committee of Einherjar.

Heimdall was at his post, but the contingent of guards posted there made no move to follow as Loki, Jane and their escorts stepped out onto the bridge, so clearly Odin had not forgiven his betrayal. Jane stretched up on tiptoes to say something and he leaned down so that she could whisper in his ear. “They’re guarding him, but who is guarding _them?”_

He burst out laughing, startled, earning looks of disapproval at his levity. _Really, what did they expect from me? Meek subservience?_

There were horses waiting for them, though as Jane had not been expected there was none for her. Judging by the nervous way she eyed the animals however, she was no horsewoman, and at least being forced to share a horse saved her the embarrassment of having to admit she could not ride to a trio of people who had grown up on horseback.

“Here, you may ride with me,” he offered, and she smiled with relief. He climbed into the saddle and pulled her up behind him, and once again her arms wound round him as she sought to anchor herself.

There was another contingent of guards at the end of the bridge, this one clearly waiting for them, as they moved into formation around the party as it passed. The Allfather evidently did not trust the people who broke Loki out of the dungeons to bring him back without supervision. They were possibly also meant to shield the disgraced prince from view, but if so, it backfired, as they were much more conspicuous and required to move more slowly. Rather than a small group galloping past who would earn no reaction other than mutterings about how the young these days were always in a hurry, instead the large party attracted attention as people looked up to see what the large group that took up much of the road was about, and saw Loki in their midst.

It was a relief to finally reach the palace and escape the stares, despite the uncertain fate that awaiting him. They dismounted and handed the horses off to stableboys, Jane looking relieved to have two feet on the ground once more. Waiting by the entrance was an uncharacteristically agitated Hogun. Loki had wondered where he had been, but hadn’t bothered to ask, assuming he had simply been too sensible to go along with Thor’s plan.

“What in Valhalla’s name has happened? Malekith just tried to destroy the Nine Realms, only to be stopped by Loki of all people, and when I get back here to find out how he escaped, I find the place devastated by a Dark Elf attack and you declared traitors! Where is Thor? Nobody knows, and the Allfather will speak to no-one, but there are _whispers_!”

All of them turned to look at Jane and Loki, clearly desperately hoping for them to laugh and provide a positive explanation for Thor’s absence at such a critical time. Jane suddenly decided that her shoes were the most fascinating thing in the world and Loki stared fixedly in front of him, refusing to meet their gaze and confirm their fears.

One of the Einherjar tapped his spear on the ground pointedly, and they recalled their task and resumed their journey towards the throne room, with Hogun joining them. To anyone else, he looked part of their group, but Loki could see that he was walking ever so slightly further away from his companions than he would normally. As perceptive as the Vanir was, he probably didn’t realise he was even doing it – it was a subconscious action based on their tainted status and the suspicion over the reason behind it. He barely kept the smirk off his face. _See how it feels to have someone who has fought alongside you for centuries distrust you at even the slightest hint of betrayal! Not even wondering if your motives were good!_

The throne room was still a mess, with scorch marks, gouges in the stonework, and rubble strewn everywhere. Loki could see the subtle glimmer of magic reinforcing the ceiling, holding it up until the damage to the columns and walls could be repaired. He curled his lip in contempt. Shoddy work. The stonemasons had better work fast to repair the pillars before the spell disintegrated.

He was shocked by the state of the throne; he had missed it the last time, focused on the ship. Judging by the nature of the damage and lack of rubble, he guessed one of those infernal grenades. Deprived of his usual seat, Odin had obtained an ornate chair and placed it on the small area halfway up the steps to the throne. As ornate as the chair was, it was a mere footstool compared to the majesty of the throne of Asgard, and feeling so diminished would not do well for Odin’s temper. Oh wonderful.

Unlike his trial, this confrontation had an audience. Aside from workmen busy clearing the rubble (although he noticed they had become less busy as soon as he was marched in), there were courtiers lurking around the edges of the chamber. From what Hogun had said, and given the state of the place, it didn’t sound like Odin was holding court. He could only assume that word of his presence had spread, and people had flocked here in the hope that they might learn something. Or at least see his head impaled upon a stick, as many surely wanted. It did not seem as if they had been invited, but neither did Odin dismiss them, as he easily could. Obviously, he wanted witnesses. Loki didn’t know what to make of that.

The Einherjar herded Loki towards the ersatz throne, Jane at his side, with Sif and the Warriors Three taking position a little way behind. Odin slammed Gungnir against the ground, and glared down at him. The others knelt, but Loki refused to do anything more than a slight tilt of his head and angling his upper body ever so slightly, in a bow that gave the barest minimum of respect. Jane looked unsure as to whether to show deference as a guest should towards their host, or remain aloof in front of someone who had compared her to livestock, and opted to bob slightly with a bend of her knees as a compromise.

He smirked up at him. “Did you miss me?”

“So, you have returned.”

It took an extreme effort not to roll his eyes. “You make it sound as if I came uninvited – you demanded to speak to me and I was not given the option of declining.”

Odin growled something incoherent. “You are here to answer to an accusation of murder.”

“Didn’t we already go over this? Do not pretend you care about mortal lives this much! They kill each other in their thousands and you have never stirred yourself, even when the Tesseract was involved in one of their squabbles.”

“I am talking about Thor!”

“What?” He had known he would be suspect. He had known he would receive little gratitude for his deeds. He knew that Odin saw him only as a tool that was no longer fit for the purpose it had been created for. But it still hurt. “But that was not me! He died fighting the Kursed! The only accountability I bear is in getting injured by the beast, which drove Thor to forget all sense in his determination to strike back. Are you so determined to see me as the villain that you will declare me as such over your wife’s murderers!”

“ENOUGH!” he roared. “You will not bring her into this! Frigga clung to you like the mother of a drowned child. But she was too late to save you. The boy I knew is dead. What remains is a creature I do not recognise.”

Jane tried to intervene. “But-”

“Silence! I offered you mercy before. I shall not do so again, _Loki Laufeyson_.”

Loki felt like he’d taken a blow to the gut from Mjolnir. He heard several people exclaim in shock, and a low buzz of conversation immediately started up; evidently his heritage had not been public knowledge. He felt Jane squeeze his arm in a gesture of reassurance, and he fought down his shock while considering how he could convince Odin of his innocence. Some small, distant part of him wondered if Odin even knew what he was doing. This had the capacity to reflect worse on Odin than it did him. He was getting on in years and now his heir was dead, with the only other candidate a widely-despised traitor. Even if he took a new wife immediately and she got with a son right away, it would be many years before he would be suitable to take the throne. The Allfather was vulnerable, and the sharks would soon start circling, if they were not doing so already.

Revealing Loki’s true heritage would make no difference to anyone’s opinion of him, merely add affirmation ( _“Well, it just goes to show, doesn’t it?”_ ). But people would wonder what had possessed their King to show mercy to a Frost Giant and to raise a viper in their midst, and his judgement would be called into question. It was an extremely risky gamble to take.

“What about Heimdall? Surely he can tell you what happened?”

“Heimdall is a traitor and his counsel is suspect.”

Surely Odin could not be so blinded that he would not even accept Heimdall’s word? Even during Loki’s brief reign, Heimdall had never been less than honest. Distrustful, yes, and he had disobeyed orders not to open the Bifrost, but he had never lied. And from what he had understood from Thor, Heimdall’s part in the plan had been to call Odin to him in order to confess, thus drawing him out of the palace. Even his crime was based on honesty!

Loki could feel panic rising. Grief and paranoia were not a good combination in a ruler. He had to do something, or there would be war. If Asgard was to fall, it would destabilise the Nine Realms. Chaos would envelop Yggdrasil and they would be easy pickings for Thanos, who would find it considerably easier to obtain the Infinity Gauntlet if Asgard was too busy tearing itself apart to guard the Vault properly.

On the other hand, disputing the accusations levelled at him would only highlight Odin’s irrational behaviour. The price to pay for saving his neck could be the entire Nine Realms. Was he expected to save the universe twice in one day? The Norns were indeed playing a joke on him.

The guards closed in around him, and for the first time he noticed new ones had joined the group during the conversation, one of whom was carrying the magic-blocking chains he had been bound in last time.

He tried again. “You punish me for killing mortals, now you punish me even though I protected them! I was able to lift Mjolnir! Does that count for nothing?”

Wrong tactic. Odin’s face darkened with rage. “That hammer does not belong to you!”

“The hammer responds to one who is worthy! You would know most of all; you placed the geas yourself! _Am I not worthy_!?” He almost screamed the last part.

Two guards grabbed him, shoving Jane away, while others uncoiled the chains ready to bind him. She fought them, but her strength was no match for theirs, and she could only struggle helplessly, desperately seeking a way out. She turned to look up at Odin, frantically.

“Wait, don’t you guys have magic? Isn’t there a truth spell or potion or something?”

Odin glared down at her, enraged that a mere mortal dared defy him.

“Well, is there?”

He was silent for a long moment, finally admitting, “There is.” It seemed even Odin could see the danger in telling a falsehood that everyone present knew to be a lie. He might be the Protector of the Nine Realms, and willing to go to any lengths to keep control, but even he had to keep up some semblance of fair justice.

“But he will not take it. He is a liar through and through.” He felt a flash of anger at Odin, of all people, saying this.

“Of course he will!” She turned to look at him. “Won’t you?”

He did not want to take it. It would deaden his silver tongue and leave him vulnerable in a hostile environment. And while it would save his skin, it would take a full day to wear off, and until then anybody could seek him out and ask whatever questions they wished, however humiliating, knowing that he would have to answer honestly.

But he found himself unable to say no to her, and he was not going to lie down and accept the accusations, purely for the sake of making Odin’s madness fractionally less apparent. He nodded.

“Do we have any truth potion?” Odin asked a courtier who Loki recognised as the steward of the palace stores.

“We do, sire. I shall fetch some immediately.” He bowed and hurried off.

The Einherjar had backed off a little way, but still hovered ready to pounce should it look like he was going to make an escape, and the atmosphere was tense and awkward as the minutes ticked by while they waited for the man’s return. Jane resumed her place at his side, but this did little to calm him.

Eventually the steward re-entered the room, flushed and out of breath, carrying a bottle, which he handed to one of the nearby guards before fleeting back into the crowd in as dignified a manner as he could manage. The truth potion was a thick, black, viscous liquid the consistency of watery treacle, with a strong, bitter taste according to accounts by those who had drunk it, and it was necessary to drink an entire bottle of it to be effective. Though these qualities made it impossible to slip some into someone’s wine sneakily – even if they consumed enough drink to accumulate the necessary dosage, the flavour and consistency would give it away, he doubted this was much consolation to anyone who actually had to drink it.

He reached out for the bottle, but Odin gave a small wave of his hand, and the two guards who had grabbed him before held him again, while another pulled his head back and held it still. The guard with the bottle removed the stopper and forced it to his lips. He could balk just to be contrary, but he _had_ agreed to this, and he was not going to make a fool of himself by struggling like an infant refusing medicine, so he forced himself to submit. Though he quickly reconsidered this when he tasted it; the reports of the vile flavour had been severe understatements, and despite his vow to drink it obediently, he found himself choking and gagging. The Einherjar held him firm however, and he fought to get himself under control lest he choke to death.

After the whole bottle had been poured down his throat, they held him just long enough to ensure that it was going to stay down, and then let go and backed away so fast he fell to the floor. Jane crouched down beside him.

“Are you alright?”

Still recovering from his ordeal, and not trusting his control over his words under the effects of the potion, he waved a hand to fend off her enquiry, and stared in horror at the blueness creeping over his skin. There were gasps and disgusted mutterings from the courtiers. He stared up at Odin, stunned.

“What did you expect? It is a truth potion. It reveals the truths you try to hide.”

 _You’re the one who hid it!_ He wanted to scream, but he was too frozen to form the words. Jane sank down beside him, putting at arm round him in silent support.

Odin rose to his feet. “Loki Laufeyson,-” Loki flinched again, even though he could hardly deny the truth of it with his hideous true form on display for all to see. “-did you kill Thor Odinson?”

“No.”

“Who did?”

“No-one. He charged at the creature without seeing the primed grenade attached to it, and was unable to get clear when it detonated.”

Loki prayed he would not think to ask who had primed and set the grenade. In the mood he was in, he would find that cause enough to blame Loki. Fortunately he seemed to assume the weapon had been one the beast was carrying that had somehow been set off during the fight, sinking back into his seat, drained of his energy now that the momentum of his rage had been checked. Loki sighed with relief inwardly, though he knew he wasn’t in the clear yet. Odin had dragged him here with a purpose in mind and now that purpose lay in ruins. Story of his life, really.

“Where is Mjolnir now?”

“On Midgard. I left it where the Dark Elf ship had rested. It does not belong to me, whatever it may have decided during the battle, and it seemed a suitable memorial.”

“It belongs in the Vault.”

“Perhaps. But it is safe enough where it is, and I think Thor would approve.”

“Do not presume to speak for him!” A pause, and then, “Do you regret your actions?”

“You will have to be more specific. The potion renders me truthful, not psychic.”

“Do you regret your actions on the day of Thor’s coronation, and the period immediately after?”

“I do not regret showing the Frost Giants a way in. Thor was unready and you were so set on his ascension that demonstrating his flaws was the only way to make you see, and I did not anticipate that Heimdall would let us through. I do not regret my anger at you. You lied to me my whole life, raised me to believe I was your son when I was nothing but a tool, discarded when it has no further use. I do not regret lying to Thor about you being dead, though I will acknowledge it was cruel. I wanted him to stay away, lest he learn that I am one of the monsters he had vowed to slay and make good on his threat, and I wanted him to feel, just for a moment, the pain and emptiness I felt. I do regret sending the Destroyer. I was so full of rage I could see no other option. I do regret killing Thor; I had forgotten he was mortal and that such a blow would kill him. I do regret letting Laufey into Asgard – that aim of that plan was futile and I do not know why I expected it to work – but I do not regret killing him. I do not know whether or not I regret attacking Jotunheim.”

The entire hall was silent. He was staring down at the polished stone of the floor, and did not see Odin’s reaction to his words.

“Do you regret your actions surrounding the invasion of Midgard, this year past?”

“I regret that it was necessary. I had drifted through the Void for so long, and then had been tortured and brutalised with no end in sight, my mind had been twisted and dug through, and it seemed like the only opportunity to escape and give people warning of what was to come was to seem to capitulate. I regret having to mind control people as part of the plan, and the effect is has had on them. I regret that many died, but many more would have perished if someone who had wished to succeed had led the invasion.”

“Who is behind all this? What is their aim?”

“Thanos. His aim is to please Death, and to reclaim the Infinity Gauntlet.” Uproar from the courtiers; Odin roared for silence and it faded into horrified whispering.

“Thanos is bound and defeated. He is in no position to attack anyone.”

“This time last week you were saying the same thing about Malekith and the Aether, and look how that turned out.”

“Why didn’t you tell us this?”

He finally looked back up at Odin, to see he looked stunned and disbelieving. “Because you would not have listened.”

Odin sank back in his chair, looking on the verge of collapsing into the Odinsleep. _Don’t you dare, you old fool! I refuse to pick up your slack this time!_

One of the courtiers, recovering from his shock and remembering that Loki was bound to tell the truth, took advantage of the King’s distraction. “Hey, _Liesmith_ , are you the one who turned all the mead I ordered to give to my betrothed’s family into urine?”

“Yes,” he was forced to admit.

“You bastard! The only reason the marriage went ahead is because my lady accepted my innocence and refused her family’s orders to break off the arrangement. Her parents still to this day believe that I did it! Was it because she spurned you for me?”

He tried to grit his teeth, but the compulsion was too strong. “Yes.”

Another man pushed himself through the crowd and glared at the unfortunate trickster. “Were you the one who spread that rumour that I had sex with goats?”

“Not exactly. I do not deny I spread the story, but it was not a rumour.”

Grins vanished from faces and silence fell as it dawned on everyone that a Loki who was unable to lie was a double-edged sword, and nobody dared to ask him a question for fear of more being revealed than they might wish. People near the unfortunate animal-lover shuffled away from him.

Loki got to his feet, pulling Jane up beside him, and looked around, a mischievous grin on his face. “Really? No more questions to ask? What about you, Lady Ylka? Does your husband know your eldest is not his? And you Lord Varik? It would be most embarrassing if someone happened to let slip that you regularly wet your bedsheets well into adulthood!”

The hall was now completely quiet, with everyone stood frozen, scared that the slightest movement would attract his attention.

Odin finally recovered, and banged Gungnir on the ground.

“I have no choice but to find you innocent of the charge of murdering Thor. I should throw you back in your cell to resume your sentence, but there would appear to be mitigating circumstances. Furthermore, the Alignment brought all the realms together, and every one of them saw you offer your life to save them, and you have therefore earned some small amount of goodwill. I have no doubt that you will inevitably return to your wicked ways, but in recognition of your deeds, I will allow you to keep your life and your freedom, and merely banish you from Asgard, never to darken this realm again.”

“That suits me just fine.”

At that moment a messenger entered from a side entrance and tentatively approached the throne.

“Yes, what is it?”

“You asked to be informed when we had suitable boats prepared, sire. The lights are still the process of being created, but will be ready by dusk.”

“What is going on?”

“What do you think? Thor’s funeral. We do not have a body to burn and send off, but we will do what we can to honour him. Now, as I was saying… You are hereby banished from Asgard, never to set foot here again. Guards, escort them back to the Bifrost.”

“Whoa, hold on a moment!” Jane interrupted. “You’re not even going to let him attend his brother’s funeral? Especially when you didn’t let him go to his mother’s either?”

“Look at him!” Odin snarled, gesturing at Loki, still revoltingly blue. “He is no more his brother than he is her son! And of course I did not let him be present – he was a prisoner and was too dangerous to be let out of his cell!”

“Oh like genetics is all that makes a family! And don’t tell me you couldn’t have managed it! I’m pretty sure the chains those guys are carrying aren’t just decorative!”

He attempted to glare her into submission, but she refused to be cowed, even by the most powerful man in the Nine Realms. She just glared straight back at him defiantly.

 _Oh, she is so delightfully fierce!_ They both broke their staring contest to look at him. Oh Valhalla, had he said that out loud?!

“And what of you, Jane Foster? You who came here last time clinging to Thor, and now you seem to have moved on to another so easily.”

“It’s not like that! I don’t think I liked him as much as he seemed to like me, but that doesn’t mean I don’t admire him or that I don’t want to say goodbye properly!”

He made another attempt to glare the recalcitrant mortal into submission, which had no more effect than his previous efforts. He gave in, looking angry at being the one to back down.

“Very well. Guards, escort them to a room. The pair of you can remain until the ceremony, and I will allow you to stay for the night, if only because I do not want to interrupt the people’s observance of Thor’s passing to Valhalla for anything but the most urgent matters, and you are not that. But you leave first thing in the morning.”

They were marched out of the room, Loki keeping his mouth firmly shut lest he blurt out any more embarrassing thoughts. Sif, Fandral and Volstagg remained behind, still kneeling; traitors did not rise until they were commanded to do so. Hogun had slipped away into the crowd, any loyalty he had to his friends outweighed by knowing that he would not help them by interfering and earning Odin’s wrath alongside them. They looked lost now. Evidently they had expected him to be found guilty, and thus they would enact their promised revenge, venting their frustrations, assuaging their guilt at their complicity in the doomed quest, and possibly even earning their honour back.

They were marched through the corridors, people staring as they passed, first when they saw the despised second prince was back, and then when they caught sight of his Jotun skin. He heard gasps and jeers, and burned with humiliation. Half expecting to be dragged back to the dungeons, he was surprised when they stopped before a familiar set of doors. Odin had commanded they take him to a room, and rather than seek out a guest room, they had brought him to his old chambers.

He placed a palm against the carved wood, and the magic unravelled, recognising its master. He pushed the doors open, and strode inside, Jane following. The doors slammed shut behind them, leaving them alone at last, and finally cut off from the stares. He looked down at his hands in disgust. The effects of the potion lasted a full day; was he really expected to endure this for that time?

“So are these your rooms? Cool décor. Very Miss Havisham.”

He forced his gaze away from his monstrous self, and the sight that met his eyes was barely better. His chambers had obviously not been tended to since his fall two years ago, and a thick layer of dust covered everything. He briefly thought of summoning a servant, but it would take a whole team of them several days to set things properly right, and it was hardly worth having to endure more people gawping at him for the sake of fastidiousness if he was never coming here again. He would just have to settle for making it habitable.

“Yes, it seems the cleaners have been rather remiss in their duties. Hold on a moment.” He conjured a shield around them, and she poked at it curiously.

“How are you able to do something like- Oh!”

He magicked up a gust of wind that swirled around the room, sweeping up clouds of dust and depositing it into the fireplace. Several things got knocked over, but he had never been one for collecting fragile ornaments. And anything valuable or delicate was stored safely away. It did not strip all the dust from the room, but at least it had swept the worst of it away and now they were no longer in danger of choking every time they brushed against something.

He swiftly found out how wrong he was when he threw himself into an armchair and found himself enveloped in a cloud of dust.

When he finally was able to stop coughing and opened his eyes, he found Jane in front of him offering him the bottle of water that had been on the small table by his bed. He gratefully gulped some down to soothe his irritated throat, nodding his thanks.

“I guess we’d better dust the non-magical way, huh?”

He resented having to lower himself to the role of a servant, but the state of the place was unendurable and they had precious little else to do for several hours.

Together they beat and brushed at the furniture and hangings, Loki sweeping the loosened dust with his magic and dumping it all in the fireplace, until eventually they had it fairly clean. He was sure the palace’s head housekeeper would still exclaim in horror and dismiss any servant responsible for such a subpar cleaning, but it was sufficient for their immediate needs.

Jane looked down at herself. “Ugh, I’m filthy, I take it that door leads to some sort of bathroom?” He nodded. “Wait, it’s your room. Maybe you should go first?”

“It is fine. Clean yourself. I do not mind waiting.”

“Thanks.”

He sat in the now-properly clean (well, mostly) armchair, pondering the events of the last few hours. He swore he only sat thoughtfully for a minute or two, but the next thing he knew, Jane was emerging from the bathing room with her hair wrapped in a small towel. She was back in her clothes, though she had made an effort to get the worst of the dust out of them.

“Hey, your turn! I tried to be quick – I don’t know how the plumbing operates here or if there’s a finite amount of hot water.”

“There is not, but thank you for your consideration anyway.” He fled into the bathing chamber, wanting at least a few minutes alone with his thoughts after such a tumultuous day; he wasn’t sure which had been more gruelling – the battle or his encounter with Odin.

He was quick enough himself, not wishing to look upon his hideous true form any more than necessary, though he couldn’t help giving in to curiosity. He did not look much different, other than the colour ( _Repulsive enough in itself, though!_ ). His skin actually felt slightly different, rougher. As with other Jotuns he had seen, he was covered with swirling markings. He wondered for a moment if they meant anything, before dismissing the thought. _I don’t care! I don’t want to think about this monstrous form!_ He was relieved to discover that his cock was the same aside from the colour change and patterning, the lines on his lower stomach and thighs converging on it and extending onto the length. Though he was reluctant to investigate the similarities and differences in that area any further. _I will not touch myself in this form!_

Normally he might have gone out with just a towel and donned his clothes later, but he wanted to hide as much of his body as he could, and hastened to dress himself as soon as he was dry.

He found Jane looking over his bookshelves, running her fingers over the spines of the books. She would not be able to read any of them, of course, not having the gift of Allspeak. He would have to fix that.

He walked over to her. “You are interested in the books?”

“Yeah, but I can’t tell what any of them say. They all seem to be written in runes.”

“Do you want to be able to read them?”

“You’ll teach me?” Her eyes shone with excitement and he felt a thrill. He quickly focused on his reply, scared of blurting out something embarrassing.

“In a manner of speaking. Sit down a moment.” She did so, looking at him with interest. “Have you wondered how it is that you are able to communicate with Asgardians?”

She frowned, and he had to bite his tongue to avoid spilling how adorable he found her scrunched up expression. “You know, I hadn’t really thought about it. I suppose I just assumed that you were all really good with languages. But that doesn’t make sense – it’s pretty unlikely for everyone to be fluent in the same language, especially when nobody has any interest in going to a place where it’s spoken. And I’m no linguist but I don’t think English even existed in its current form back when Asgard last got involved with Earth.” She was quiet for a moment. “So how, then?”

“Magic, my dear Jane.”

“Of course. Silly question I suppose.” He saw her eyes widen as she remembered what he had just offered. “You can teach me how you do it?”

“Indeed. We are not supposed to offer it to mortals, but it will be a considerable disadvantage on our travels if you are effectively illiterate, and not everyone we encounter will have the Allspeak themselves. Now, sit still. I must concentrate…”

“But how does it work? You can just wave your hands and I’ll be able to understand all languages?”

Of course she wouldn’t let him be until she had assuaged her curiosity. “Essentially, yes, although I wouldn’t necessarily call it hand-waving. The Allspeak works by linking the person to Yggdrasil itself, and through that the universe beyond, thus allowing you to understand and be understood by all within it.

It is fortunate that it can be passed on through children, and so it is fairly uncommon for someone to be without it. Just as well as there are few who can bestow it, as it can only be done by one who can see the links of Yggdrasil, or who can tap into them in some way, such as through an artefact like Gungnir, and there are less and less such people as the centuries pass. Fortunately for you I am one of those few. It is how I can slip through the cracks between worlds so easily, and possibly how I survived the Void. Now, please. This is very delicate work.”

He pressed his hands against her temples, and focused on linking her to the cosmic forces around Yggdrasil. It was careful, delicate work, but slowly he forged and shaped the connection and felt it take hold. And if he lingered a little more than necessary, well, he was just making sure.

“There, done! Now, what shall we read first?”

She pored over the texts, peppering Loki with endless questions about their contents. It was nice to have someone interested in knowledge. Time flew by, and all too soon the sun had set. They would be summoned soon. Assuming Odin didn’t conveniently ‘forget’.

Jane noticed as well. “I guess we should start getting ready. They’ll totally wait till the last minute to call us, and act like it’s our fault if we end up being even a second late.”

She closed the book with obvious reluctance, and moving over to a side table, picked up a comb and began to brush her hair. “Ugh. I can’t believe this. I go to the trouble of packing a bag, and then I leave it behind and have to show up to an important ceremony in filthy clothing. Not that it would be remotely appropriate funeral wear even if it was clean.”

“You look quite lovely.” _Curse this potion!_

She smiled. “Thanks!”

Loki didn’t bother with any preparations. He would wear a hooded cloak to hide his features, and if anyone caught sight of him, the state of his outfit would be the last thing they noticed.

“Aren’t you getting ready?”

“What does it matter? It will not change the fact that I am hideous!”

She put down the comb, her smile fading. “Oh, Loki.” She got up and sat back next to him, taking his hands in hers. “I know this is hard for you to hear, because it goes against what you’ve been told your whole life, but, Loki, you look amazing like this! And I don’t think you’re hideous at all!”

“You speak nonsense.”

“You really don’t like this, do you?” She brushed her fingers against his cheek, and he had to fight not to lean into her touch.

“I hate it. _I hate it._ I wish I could tear my own skin off and rip my eyes out!”

She threw herself on him and wrapped her arms around him. “I hate that you think that about yourself.”

He felt dampness against his neck, and realised she was crying. He felt a little guilty for being the cause. After a few minutes she sifted slightly, resting against his shoulder and stroking his cheek.

“Your skin feels interesting. Not just temperature-wise. It’s really rough, like granite, and you’d expect it to be hard, but it’s soft. It’s weird.” He tensed, and she must have felt it as she hastened to clarify. “Weird in a good way.”

“Is that even possible?”

“Sure. The universe would be boring without a little weirdness. And I’d be out of a job.”

Her stroking moved to his hair, and she ran her fingers through it. He felt her shift in that way that he was starting to recognise as signifying that she was burning to ask a question of some kind.

“So I noticed something.”

“What?”

“Well, I saw that Thor had a couple of small braids in his hair. And Odin had these short ones just behind his ears. And several people in that hall had braids of some sort or another.”

“And…?”

“Well, it seems to be a thing here, but you don’t have any.”

“It is the mark of a highly renowned warrior of high rank.”

“So how come you don’t have any?”

“Me? I am not deserving of such.”

“Oh come on! Even Goatfucker Guy had braids! Don’t tell me he’s better than you.”

“Many would tell you so.”

“Well it’s about time you stopped listening to what the people here think of you.” She pulled her chair closer and began running her hands through his hair.

He tried to ignore how nice it felt. “What are you doing?”

“What do you think? Braiding your hair, stupid.”

He submitted to her ministrations, knowing that she was right – he did have the status. And it was pleasant having her devote her attention on him like this.

She finished the braid, and looked around for something to hold it. “Is there-? Wait…” She rifled through her pockets one-handed and fished something out of one, winding it around the end of the braid. “I don’t have any hair bands, so this cable tie will have to do.”

There came a knock on the door.

“Yes?” he called.

“We have been sent to bring you to the ceremony,” responded a voice, muffled by the door.

“One moment!”

He moved over towards the wardrobe and pulled out a hooded cloak. That would do to conceal his hideous features.

“Oh no you don’t!” Jane tore the cloak out of his grip and tossed it onto the floor. She grabbed his elbow and pulled him towards the door. He easily had the strength to resist her, but he was so surprised by her temerity (which he really should be used to by now) that he allowed her to manhandle him. “I refuse to let you hide from them!”

Subjecting himself to her will, he opened the doors and faced the company of Einherjar without the disguise he desperately wanted. Brief looks of disgust flickered over the guards’ faces. They were too professional to drop their stoic demeanour, but he was an expert at reading faces, and their reactions were so obvious they might as well have contorted their features in revulsion. In that moment he wished for nothing more than to run back into his room and hide, and he felt a flash of anger at himself. No matter how ugly he might look, was he really so much of a coward that he would flee at the very idea of a negative reaction?

“Lead on.”

*******************************************************************

The funeral was emotional, and Loki was unable to keep himself from weeping. He was past the state of caring whether or not people might see it as weakness or accept it as honouring the passage of a warrior to Valhalla. Jane was quiet at his side. Whenever he glanced at her, he saw she was crying also.

There was no body to bury, of course, so various meaningful personal effects had been gathered and placed in the boat instead – his best cloak, his helmet, a wooden toy horse that had been his favourite toy as a child, back before he had spurned anything not a weapon, a stumpy-looking bilgesnipe that he had inexpertly carved as a Midwinter gift for Odin, an axe he had fought with before Odin deemed him ready to take up Mjolnir, a pair of boots made from the hide of the first beast he had ever slain. So many memories attached to each item.

Nobody seemed to show that much interest in him beyond some looks of curiosity, though he did not know whether it was resignation, acceptance, or out of respect for Thor (though surely brawling with a Jotun would be the most fitting tribute to him). Afterwards, they slipped back to his rooms, as subtly as one can when accompanied by a retinue of Einherjar.

It was late by this time, and Loki was weary, but he would never set foot in these rooms again and he was sure Odin would turf them out the moment the sun had cleared the horizon, so he should take advantage of the opportunity to pack some of his possessions while he had the chance. Jane watched him as he rifled though his things.

There was actually surprisingly little he wanted to take. Many once-valued mementos now only served to remind him of betrayals and broken relationships. Things that had once seemed essential which he was clearly able to live without. The comforts he had enjoyed that were the mark of a Prince of Asgard and now of no use to him. He looked around him at the possessions accumulated over a lifetime, and saw little worth salvaging.

“Are you OK?”

“Not entirely. It occurs to me that these chambers are full of items I have collected and treasured, yet there is little that I wish to keep.”

“Well that’s the thing with life. We change and grow, and sometimes you end up abandoning what seemed important to the old you.”

He sighed, and resumed his task. He picked out some rare potions ingredients that he would struggle to find, a few books that might interest Jane, extra daggers, a few changes of clothes, money. Practical things that would be of use. Then, hanging from a hook on the side of the wardrobe, a scarf. He held it, overwhelmed by an unexpected wave of grief. Frigga had woven him this scarf, even though he had never really felt the cold (and she knew better than anyone why that was). It was utterly useless to him, and a symbol of the lies he had been fed, and yet… he could not leave it behind. He was about to add it to the other items, when something better came to mind, and instead he turned to Jane and draped it over her shoulders.

“Here. This has too many memories for me to be willing to leave it behind, eventually to be claimed by someone with no respect for the work that my mother put into it, but I have no use for it, so it is yours.”

“Really? Are you sure? I don’t know if I deserve something like this…”

“I am sure, and you do.”

She ran her hands over it. “It’s beautiful. Thank you!”

“You are quite welcome.”

He spent a few more minutes searching for anything worth salvaging from the ruins of his old life, but there was nothing more to add to what seemed a pathetically small pile. Even telling himself that a warrior does not need home comforts, and that it was good to travel light was scant comfort.

He took a deep breath and let it out slowly, then turned to the chair where Jane sat watching him, still stroking the scarf. She looked as tired as he felt.

“We should retire for the night. An early starts tomorrow is a certainly; Odin will not have us on Asgard a minute more than he has to.”

She nodded and struggled to her feet, staggering a few steps before pausing. “Wait, I don’t have anything to wear for bed!”

“Why wear anything?” She glared at him. “Here.” He went over to a chest of drawers and pulled out a loose shirt. It was quite baggy on him (a style he had never been fond of) and with her being so small it would cover her small frame suitably.

She muttered a thank you, and stepped into the bathing chamber to change, emerging a few minutes later wearing the shirt and carrying her clothes in a bundle (though he noticed that the scarf was neatly folded on top), which she placed on a nearby chair.

The shirt did indeed cover her adequately, coming down to mid thigh and hiding her figure, yet still managed to be utterly indecent. Her slim, beautiful legs, usually covered by her clothing, were almost entirely on display. The neckline, moderately low on him to show off his collarbone, hung low enough on her that her cleavage was on full display, and if she leaned forward at the right angle he would easily be able to catch a glimpse of more. Tonight was going to be sweet torture.

“Are you looking down my top?”

“Yes,” he was forced to admit. “Though technically it is _my_ top.”

He grabbed some nightclothes of his own – a plain shirt and loose trousers - and fled to the bathing chamber, partially to spare her blushes having to watch him change, and partly to avoid continuing this conversation. This truth potion could not wear off soon enough!

Mercifully, when he emerged, she was in bed and already had her eyes closed in pursuit of sleep. He climbed into the bed on the other side, careful to keep a respectful distance between them, muttering a goodnight – quietly, in case she was asleep already – which she returned, drowsily. He expected to be tossing and turning and unable to find sleep, however, the Norns saw fit to reward him for enduring his trials today, and he fell asleep almost as soon as he laid his head upon the pillow.

******************************************************************

He awoke to find she had made her way into his arms overnight, though whether it was she, him, or both of them equally responsible, he could not say. One thing that he could say with authority though, was that the throbbing between his legs needed to be dealt with swiftly. He escaped to the bathing chamber to deal with the problem, glad at least that he had awoken before her this time and could make his undignified escape without witnesses.

When he emerged she was sitting up in bed, yawning and rubbing her eyes. “Urrggh! Morning.”

The shirt was falling off one shoulder, revealing an expense of creamy skin and part of one breast. He froze in the doorway, unable to do anything but stare transfixed, and it seemed like his relieving himself had been an utter waste of time. _Get a hold of yourself, man! It’s as if you’ve ever seen a woman before!_

Noticing his strange behaviour, she frowned with concern. “Are you OK? What’s the matter?”

“I am extremely aroused right now. I want nothing more than to tear that shirt off you and-” He shoved a fist into his mouth and bit down, but the damage had been done. _OH BY ALL THE REALMS OF YGGDRASIL, WHY HAD HE AGREED TO DRINK THAT POTION?!_

He frantically scuttled back into the bathing chamber, slamming the door, pressing his back to it and slowly sinking to the floor. Then he pressed his face into his hands and let out a muffled scream.

“Loki?” he heard through the door. “Loki, are you-? No of course you’re not OK. Stupid question. Look, it’s alright!”

How could it possibly be alright? He had just utterly humiliated himself to the one person who didn’t look at him with suspicion and hostility, and now his future lay in ruins! He would get either open mockery or a polite denial, and their travels throughout the realms as he showed her wonders would be tainted by awkwardness, until she inevitably left him to wander alone. He couldn’t even bear to face her.

“Please, leave me to my shame!”

“Loki, please, it’s OK. You don’t have anything to be ashamed of.”

“Really? Did you not hear what I said to you?”

“Yeah, I did, and I wanna hear the rest of it. What were you gonna do after you tore the shirt off me?”

“You expect me to believe you want to hear more?”

“No, if I’m being honest, I don’t really want you to tell me that.”

Of course not. Well, he supposed he should at least be grateful she was being straightforward with him.

“I want you to show me.”

It was probably just as well he was already on the floor. “What?”

“You heard me.”

Slowly, feeling as if his limbs had turned to water, he pulled himself upright and opened the door, needing to see her to confirm that she was not joking. There was no hint of mockery in her gaze as she stared back at him, though she was definitely blushing, and nervously fiddling with the too-long sleeves of the shirt.

“Do you truly mean that?”

“I wouldn’t have said it otherwise. I don’t get why you’re so shocked. You’re a good-looking guy, intelligent, talented, in great shape, I think maybe you’d be pretty funny if you stopped taking everything so seriously all the time, you’re a mighty hero who saved the universe. I know you have some major hang-ups about this whole Frost Giant thing, but Loki, I really really don’t care what you are. You’re still you.”

“But what I am is-”

He wasn’t even entirely sure what he was about to say, his thoughts confused and the truth potion compelling him to pick the truth from a kaleidoscope of emotions, and he never got to find out. Jane reached up, grabbed fistfuls of his tunic to pull him down to her level, and kissed him, cutting off the words and making him forget all else.

He wound his arms around her, pulling her against him, returning the kiss almost frantically, the feelings that he’d tried to bury deep rising up and consuming him. The want to take things slow and savour everything and court her properly before allowing his lust free rein warred with the urge to have her _right now_. Slowly but surely the latter was winning, and he found himself manoeuvring her towards the bed…

They were interrupted by a knock at the door. He pressed his face into her shoulder and muttered, “I wish to kill whoever that is.”

“The feeling’s mutual, but if we ignore them, they’ll just come drag us out anyway.”

The fact that she was right didn’t make the interruption any easier to bear. He opened the door a fraction.

He opened the door a fraction, and addressed the waiting guards. “We are not yet dressed. Please allow us a few moments.”

He shut the door again without waiting for an answer.

“It’ll save time if we get dressed at the same time, but I don’t think it’s a good idea if we change clothes where we can see each other.” She picked up her discarded clothing from the chair where she had left it and stepped into the bathing chamber. “Knock when you’re done.”

He stared at the door for a moment before shaking himself and proceeding to dress. Normally he wouldn’t hesitate to take as long as possible to annoy the guards, but he was on thin ice right now and Odin was desperately seeking someone to vent his grief on; Loki wouldn’t put it past him for him to declare that ignoring orders from Einherjar carrying out royal commands was treason and therefore grounds for execution.

He knocked at the door as soon as he had his undershirt and trousers on, knowing that her simpler outfit would be quicker to put on, and there was no point keeping her waiting while he donned all the pieces of his armour. Sure enough, she emerged right after his knock, and sat down to comb her hair, while watching him finish dressing. Her gaze was so intense that it felt more like he was removing garments than putting them on. He gathered the items he’d set aside last night into his magical storage space, Jane looking on curiously, and they both headed towards the doors.

They were hurried through the corridors at a brisk pace, the guards obviously not willing to waste any more time on them than necessary. This time Jane was offered a horse of her own, but politely declined and rode behind Loki once more. The hour was still early, and fewer people were about than there had been when they’d passed this way the day before.

What was odd was that he could see people ahead of them abandon their business and run off down the street, banging on doors and calling out something he was too far away to hear as they went. He cringed internally. Were they really so thankful to be rid of him that they wanted to witness his leaving for themselves? Or did they want to gawp at the Frost Giant? Shutters were beginning to open on windows, and people emerged from side streets, and before long the streets were lined with people. So much for a quiet escape. With so many people in the hall when Odin had banished him, he should have expected that word of the approximate time of his departure would leak out. Well, this gauntlet would be over quickly enough.

The people hanging out of windows began to throw things, and Loki made ready to cast a shield against the torrent of eggs and overripe fruit about to rain upon him… only to see flower petals floating down through the air around them. All in shades of green and gold. Cheering went up as they passed. Loki could only stare around him, stunned. What was he supposed to do?

Jane squeezed him gently. “See? You’re their hero, monster or not.”

The entire route to the Bifrost was throngs with people, and it was a surreal experience being showered with adulation. He found himself wishing Thor could see it, and felt a pang of sadness.

He had wondered if Odin would be awaiting him at the Bifrost, either to wish him well or send him on his way with threats and curses ringing in his ears, but there was only Heimdall and his new company of guards. He wasn’t sure if he was disappointed of relieved. He did notice the team of guards was smaller today though. Hopefully that meant the Allfather was seeing sense.

“My prince. I have been told to expect you, but not where you would be going. Where do you wish to travel to?”

He pushed aside his surprise at the use of his old title, and from Heimdall of all people, who had never seemed to like him much. “Midgard, please. The same location where we were retrieved from.”

This was hardly an auspicious start to their travels, so it would be good for Jane to have a brief stop home first to recuperate (ideally in a bed), and she could retrieve her belongings.

They took their positions, Jane clinging to him, still not quite used to the experience, and Heimdall slid the sword home, sending them shooting through the portal.

After a quick glance to make sure they had indeed landed on Jane’s balcony, he wasted no more time and, pulling her flush against him, engaged her in a passionate kiss. She melted against him, returning his kiss with an equal fervour. Now that they were free of Asgard he was going to make the most of it. The Norns owed him, damnit!

He was just relaxing into it, when he caught sight of something out of the corner of his eye and stopped. Standing inside, staring at them through the glass door, was Nick Fury.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \- Hogun is totally, 'Guys, I left you alone for like 5 minutes! WTF!' BTW I don’t want to suggest Hogun is some kind of fair-weather friend or something. Just wanted them to have a taste of their own medicine after the whole ‘The king of our mortal enemies said the break in was an inside job? SOUNDS LEGIT’ thing from _Thor_. And he’s smart enough to know that inserting himself into proceedings will only piss Odin off  & do nothing to help the other three.
> 
> \- The line about Frigga holding Loki like a drowned child is taken from the version of Loki’s ‘trial’ scene that took place in the prelude comic (though I tweaked the tense for obvious reasons), as are "Did you miss me?" & addressing him as “Loki Laufeyson”. While I like how the scene turned out in the end, I do kinda wish that they’d kept more of this stuff in. Calling him Laufeyson like that was fucking *cold* & was somehow even worse than telling him his birthright was to die, because it was such a complete & ultimate rejection.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Eeeek! I am so sorry for taking so long, but here it is at last! This is the final proper chapter, but there'll be an epilogue.

She was enjoying herself a lot and was so caught up in the kiss that she stumbled when Loki jerked away and let go suddenly. She opened her eyes to glare at him and was about to demand an explanation, when she saw he wasn’t even looking at her. Turning to follow his gaze, she was startled to see a man standing in her (well, her mom’s, but same thing) apartment, watching them through the glass. He was bald, black and wearing a long leather coat. One of his eyes was covered with a patch, though whether he actually needed it or whether he just wore it for effect, she had no idea. The overall look was pretty intimidating, but she was pretty jaded by this point, and he wasn’t even the most impressive person she had encountered this morning. From what she could see of his expression through the glass, he did not look happy. Great. Just what they needed – another confrontation with an angry guy wearing an eyepatch.

Loki stepped forward, opening the door and walking inside as if he owned the place and was merely returning after a brief walk. Jane quickly moved to stay by his side, half fearing he would be ambushed and dragged off the moment he was inside. She did not want to be left alone after all this.

Their path was blocked by the mysterious man. There was a moment of tension where all three of them seemed to contemplate how to avoid either refusing to back down and risk escalating matters, or conceding and showing weakness. The effect was ruined by piercing whistles and applause; Darcy was sat on the couch and had obviously seen her and Loki’s little display. She blushed with intense embarrassment.

“Go, Jane!”

His attempt to intimidate completely blown, the man stalked away, deliberately turning his back to them and moving to a spot over by the dining table, where he resumed glaring. What was it with guys with eyepatches? Were they trying to make up for losing an eye by trying to prove they could glare extra hard with just one?

Loki seemed too busy trying to glare right back to say anything. She folded her arms and hardened her own expression. “Who the hell are you and what are you doing in my apartment?”

Staring contest interrupted, his attention swung to her. “Nick Fury, Director of SHIELD, and I’m here because I want answers.”

“I posted something online explaining everything! Don’t tell me nobody saw it?”

“I saw it.” He waved his arm in the direction of the TV. The sound was muted, but her photo was clearly viable in one corner of the screen. “Do you really think a post on a website is good enough?”

“Well, yeah.” He opened his mouth, and she kept going, refusing to let him speak until she had said what she wanted to. “I explained who was behind the attack, why they did it, the unlikelihood of a repeat attack, the reason behind the portals appearing, and why Loki was wandering about freely! If you think I didn’t provide enough information on any of that then tough luck. You’ve got some nerve demanding answers of us! Sorry we didn’t save the universe in a way that met your standards. Maybe you should have arrived in time to actually help! Where the hell were you guys yesterday? Don’t tell me you were busy washing your hair!”

His expression turned murderous. “That’s one of my questions actually. You said you’d contacted an agency that could get in touch with the Avengers, which sounds a hell of a lot like us, but to the best of my knowledge you did not contact us.”

“Well then your knowledge could definitely be better! We called the night before. Loki pretended to have taken me hostage and promised he’d be in Greenwich and that there’d be an army, because an invasion by elves sounded pretty unbelievable and you’d already ignored all Darcy’s calls about me being whisked off to another world as it was. So we figured it’d be better for him to imply he was invading London and sort out the confusion later.”

He frowned. “Well it’s news to me.” He turned back to glare at Loki. “Are you sure you called SHIELD?”

“Jane is correct. I did indeed claim such things to SHIELD, as I felt it would be the most effective way of gaining your attention. I could not tell you who I spoke to, as I ignored their greeting and terminated the contact before they could give a response. I am not even sure if anyone answered at all, or if I was talking to a machine. Jane was the one who initiated the call however – I merely grabbed the device and took over.”

He still looked suspicious, so Jane pulled her phone out and opened the call log, not particularly caring that he’d be able to see that she had them saved as ‘Jackbooted Thugs’. “There, see?”

“So how come I don’t know about it?” There was a different tone to his voice now. He was still suspicious, but it didn’t seem to be about them anymore.

“That I could not tell you. It is something you must take up with your colleagues.” The withering contempt was obvious in Loki’s voice. She got the impression he didn’t like this guy even before SHIELD had dropped the ball on this invasion.

“Oh I will, trust me. Now how about you tell me what led to this whole clusterfuck and why the hell the psycho that attacked us last time round is involved?”

Jane lost what was left of her temper at Fury’s attitude and stepped in between the two men. “You want the story? Fine. Long story short, and you’d better pay attention, because I am not repeating myself. The portals that were showing up everywhere were a side effect of an alignment of the worlds that happens every 5000 years called the Convergence. Erik has a bunch of notes detailing his research if you want to know more. I got sucked through one of those portals and infected-slash-possessed by some magical artefact. Thor shows up and decides it’s serious enough to need checking out in Asgard. Asgard then got attacked by Dark Elves who wanted this magic macguffin I had. They hold them off, but barely. Thor decides that the best option is to go to their planet – or what’s left of it anyway – offer to hand the Aether over, and then blast it and them to smithereens during the handover, and he breaks Loki out of prison because Odin has put everything on lockdown and he’s the only one who knows all the back exits between the worlds. Only it all goes wrong and the Aether turns out to be indestructible, and Malekith ends up getting away, leaving a bunch of his minions behind to deal with us, one of which was some mutant monster elf that was pretty much a one man army. Loki managed to kill it but it took Thor along with it. He was seriously injured, and needed to recover, and we knew Malekith was going to come here to unleash the Aether and for all intents and purposes destroy the universe, so we took a portal back here, where we ate pizza and discussed plans for saving the universe.”

She took a deep breath and folded her arms, glaring back at him, daring him to have a problem with any of that.

“Go back to the part where Thor died. Do you mean to tell me that Thor, who seems to be able to take anything from what I’ve seen, died in a fight with a bunch of elves? And Loki just happened to be there?”

Loki snarled. “I did not kill him! As mighty a warrior as Thor was, battlefields are messy and chaotic and such things happen. And truly, you have not seen what Thor could do. The Chitauri were pathetic creatures and hardly a suitable demonstration of his prowess.”

He and Fury resumed their glaring match.

“Well you sure seem to have taken advantage of his absence.”

“What in all the realms do you mean, mortal?”

“I’m talking about that little show on the balcony there. Last I heard Thor and Dr Foster had a thing going, and now all of a sudden she’s letting you stick your tongue down her throat within days of her boyfriend biting the dust, and I’m supposed to believe that you had nothing to do with his death and that she is totally in her right mind and not being controlled somehow?”

“I have told you! I did not kill Thor! And Jane is in full command of her faculties! Why she finds me attractive is anyone’s guess, but I am doing nothing to influence her!” He grimaced at such an admission of insecurity, and Jane wanted to step forward and hug him in reassurance.

“That sounds remarkably candid, especially for the God of Lies. What’s up with that?”

“I have been given a truth potion and the effects have yet to wear off. Until they do I am unable to lie.” Loki looked both angry and worried at being forced to confess this.

For the first time since she’d met him, Jane discovered that Fury’s face could do something other than frown. His expression slowly slid into a broad and dangerous-looking smile, and she could tell he was working out how he could take advantage of Loki’s state.

“Is that the reason you’re, y’know, blue?” asked Darcy. “I kinda didn’t want to ask in case it was, like, insensitive or something.”

“Yes, it is. This is regrettably what I truly look like, and the potion reveals truth.”

“Why ‘regrettably’? It looks pretty cool.” Loki looked just as bewildered and disbelieving as he had when Jane had told him the same thing.

“Asgard is pretty damn racist and he’s internalised it pretty badly,” Jane interjected. “The illusion was put on him by Odin and he only accidentally found out a couple of years ago, so he’s having some adjustment issues.”

“Man, that’s fucked up.”

“Tell me about it.”

Fury interrupted, looking pissed off at being ignored. “So I can ask you anything I want, and you can’t lie?”

“No,” Loki bit out. “Though you should be aware of the phrase ‘The truth hurts’. Be careful what you ask – you may not like the answers.”

“We’ll see about that. Let’s start with where were you two? Dr Foster left a note saying you’d “gone off to explore the universe” but she had clearly left her bag behind and it was obviously a short trip if you did.”

“I was summoned to Asgard,” Loki snapped through gritted teeth. “Odin wished to bombard me with questions of his own and declining was not an option. We then stayed for Thor’s funeral, though the Allfather resented granting the invitation.”

“Why the hell did Thor think it was a good idea to let you out of whatever cage you’d been dumped in, just for the sake of some directions, with no precautions? And he just assumed you’d be happy to go along with it and wouldn’t just turn around and stab him in the back?”

“Firstly, it was more than just directions. I am the only one who knows the paths between the realms, and merely giving directions would not suffice, as it requires the guidance of one who knows the ways. Secondly, he did take precautions – he placed manacles on my wrists to bind me and block my magic, which he only removed immediately before we faced Malekith, as I needed to be able to wield magic for our plan to work, and keeping them on in a fight would have been a liability, so the disadvantages of me being chained outweighed the advantages at that point. He also kept my dagger until we were already on Svartalfheim. And he had good reason for assuming that I was happy to go along with it, as you say.”

“What on earth made him so sure he could trust you?”

Loki laughed. “Oh, nothing in the whole universe could do that! But he knew he could rely on me up to a point, for we had the same goal.”

“And that was?”

“Vengeance.”

“Vengeance for what?”

“Our mother was killed by Malekith and his Kursed – what Jane termed the ‘mutant monster elf’ - in the attack on Asgard. She was the only person in my life who never treated me as lesser to Thor, and she did not abandon me even after all I had done, pleading with Odin to alter my sentence from execution to lifelong imprisonment, and visiting me even though she was forbidden to. The last words I said to her were harsh ones that I will forever regret, for even though she lied to me my whole life just as Odin did, I cannot truly hate her.”

Fury looked smug at getting so much compromising detail, and Jane wanted to punch him for treating Loki’s grief as some sort of compromising nugget of information that could be used against him. He appeared about to ask another question, and Loki snarled. “If you ask further questions on this topic I will kill you to ensure you never repeat what you hear!”

Fury didn’t show any outward sign of being intimidated by this threat, but the smugness faded from his features and he narrowed his one eye, and he did not pursue the topic, as his next question was…

“And after that you’d have meekly gone back in your cell?”

Loki snorted. “Of course not. I had intended to slip away on Svartalfheim. Thor would have had no trouble getting back without my help – as angry as Odin might have been at his actions, he would not have left him stranded. Well, not without an opportunity to harangue him, at any rate. As much as it pained me having to pass up the chance of revenge against Malekith, it would have been my best opportunity, and I could console myself in at least having a role in his defeat.” He laughed bitterly. “And I was sure it would be a defeat, for of course Thor would emerge victorious!” He flung his arms out, as if offering the obviousness of the prospect to the universe. “Whatever our differences, that shows you how much blind trust I had in the fool!”

“So why didn’t you run away?”

“Because the Nine Realms are my home too, and I will not see them fall! Because I wanted vengeance on Malekith, and I could no longer be assured of having it by proxy! Because it would have meant leaving Jane lost and alone on a foreign realm with no way of getting home!” His anger seemed to die and he sank in upon himself, sighing, apparently forgetting to care about his openness. “What do I even have to do to be good enough? Whether it is Odin, Thor or Thanos, it seems I am only ever of any worth as much as I am useful to others, and that value is still only as a piece to be moved around a game board.”

Jane’s heart broke a little at the despair in his voice, and she moved to put her arms around him and rest her head against his chest in reassurance, not caring what Fury thought. She felt Loki’s arms come up around to embrace her in return, one of his hands stroking her hair. She relaxed into him, not realising how on edge she had been until she had his comforting presence around her.

“Who’s Thanos?”

“He sent me to Midgard to fetch the Tesseract, but I rather failed in my task. What is that phrase you mortals have? ‘My bad’?” She could tell without looking that he was smirking.  
“Hold on, you screwed up the invasion deliberately?” Fury’s voice held nothing but disbelief.

“Of course. You really think I would come up with such a terrible plan so full of holes, that could be foiled by a group of people who spent more time fighting each other than they did me? I should be insulted.”

“You can’t expect me to believe that you aren’t behind the attack, even though you were clearly in command of the Chitauri?”

“May I remind you of the truth potion? Even if I cared to lie at this point, I couldn’t. And just because I was given temporary command over a force to complete a task, does not mean they are mine.”

“So if this Thanos guy is really in charge, where the hell was he?”

Loki laughed and Jane rolled her eyes; even she knew the answer to that one. “A general does not lead his troops directly on the battlefield, especially not for a mere skirmish. I did not see you at Stark’s architectural overcompensation that day, and certainly not your World Security Council.”

“Millions of dollars in damage, hundreds of lives lost, and you call that a _skirmish_?”

Loki laughed even harder. “Oh I assure you, compared to what is coming, this was nothing.” Jane moved her head slightly, so she could watch the pair of them. Loki looked as contemptuous as she expected, Fury appeared disbelieving and pissed off.

“And what is coming?”

“A bigger and more organised army, led by someone who actually intends to win, possibly even Thanos himself if he feels ready to show his hand directly. Thanos is quite probably the most powerful being in the universe, but that is not enough for him; he desires Death, and strives to make himself more powerful to achieve his goal.”

“You’re telling me he’s suicidal? Yet somehow he’s going round killing other people?”

“No. He desires Death. Literally. He wishes to court the personification of death itself.” Fury’s expression, while remaining unchanged, somehow managed to convey increased scepticism. Loki resumed speaking before he could offer a comment. “Do not even try to pick apart the reasoning or feasibility there. There is a reason he is called the Mad Titan. Well, many reasons, but that is one. That is why he revels in killing as many as possible – he wishes to offer her tribute, and flowers or jewellery are not considered to be sufficient.”

“And he picks my goddamn planet as a gift?”

“Not exactly. While Thanos is extremely powerful, he craves more, both to win his paramour and to achieve more power for its own sake. In aid of that, he seeks out the Infinity Stones, objects of awesome power formed from singularities at the dawn of the universe, formed into concentrated ingots. Just possessing one would give someone immense power and make them virtually unstoppable. Having all six of them would give someone the power of life or death over the whole universe.”

“And what does that have to do with us?”

“The Tesseract is one, you fool. And your people meddling with it broadcast its location to the universe. In addition, this world is one of the easiest means of access into the Nine Realms and thus Asgard. There is an item in the palace vault there that he requires to be able to wield all the gems. This goal was thus important enough to gamble the one stone he did possess, but obviously, the invasion did not go as he envisaged and both the Mind Gem and the Tesseract are out of his reach.”

“Mind Gem?”

“Yes. I do hope you are keeping an eye on the sceptre that I carried. Thanos will not be the only being that recognises its power and it seems you are having issues with keeping track of what your underlings are doing.”

“I hope you don’t expect me to give it to you for safekeeping.”

“No. I know you will not believe me even under the power of truth potion, but I want nothing to do with that thing. Just so long as it is kept safe and away from its siblings, for it is not wise to keep them close together. What is that mortal saying? ‘Too many eggs in one basket’? And while I don’t necessarily trust you as a guardian, I hope the Tesseract has served as an object lesson in meddling with things beyond your knowledge and ability. Besides, he would be back for you anyway, with or without the sceptre to tempt him. While that might have been a skirmish, it was still one in which he was defeated, and so you challenged him. He will want revenge, and you are dealing with a creature that actively desires death as a tribute, so the more that die in pursuit of that revenge on either side, the better.”

“So why the hell did you help someone like this if you’re really such a good guy?”

“Because it seemed like my only option. After I fell from Asgard, I drifted through space for what felt like an eternity. There was no way to measure time, or determine up from down, and I had only my own thoughts for company, and given what had occurred immediately before, those were dark and despairing thoughts indeed. By the time I landed somewhere I was broken and weak, and easily crumbled under the tortures I was subjected to. When he demanded I use my skills at traversing the realms to access the Tesseract and use it to create a portal that would allow an army through, with the intention of making the Earth an outpost that I would rule for him, I jumped at the opportunity to get away. I had to somewhat go along with his plan, as the effects of the sceptre twisted my thoughts by its very presence, as your own Avengers found out for themselves, but I had enough manoeuvrability that I was able to sabotage the invasion, knowing that I would be dragged off to Asgard. I was past caring what they would do, just that it would get me away from him, and hopefully if he did catch up with me, I might be able to plead leniency by claiming it was not my fault the invasion failed, though I know that is a vain hope, as I was warned of the price for failure.”

Jane him shudder against her, and tightened her embrace. He leaned down and pressed his face into her hair and gripped her tighter in response, clearly past the state of caring whether or not Fury thought him weak.

“And why didn’t you say anything about this until now, if you really are that keen on stopping this whackjob?”

Loki pulled away from her slightly to answer, but didn’t loosen his arms. “Spite. Pure and simple. I knew that I would not be believed, and that Odin would deny me the chance to testify under truth potion, but I had every intention of explaining myself, but the moment I was dragged before Odin in chains for something he spent his youth doing, and saw him glaring down at me with such contempt, I just could not bring myself to prostrate myself, even for the sake of myself or the universe. Let him find out the hard way about Thanos’ ambitions. I even tried to goad him into killing me, putting me both beyond the reach of the Mad Titan and far beyond caring what happens to anyone else, but he managed to hold his temper in check. I am not sure whether or not this was a disappointment to me.”

She pressed her face against him, not wanting Fury to see her tears, and squeezed him so hard that if he had been human she would have left bruises. How could he speak so casually about his own death? What did it take to get someone to that point?

“And you couldn’t have done all this while minimising casualties?” It was a reasonable question to ask, but Jane found herself wishing Fury would step on a Dark Elf grenade.

“I think the fact that I made the invasion fail did a good job of that. Oh, I’m sure I could have made a better effort to avoid people getting hurt or killed as part of my plan, but I really don’t care, and wouldn’t bother to pretend to even if I were capable of dishonesty.”

Fury leaned forward and opened his mouth to respond to that, when there was a buzzing from one of his pockets. He pulled out a phone, looked at the screen, and grimaced while putting the device to his ear. “This had better be good.”

Jane couldn’t hear what the other person was saying, but whatever it was it didn’t seem to be good. Then again, it seemed like Fury’s default expression was unimpressed, so the news could be neutral.

“Can’t it wait? I am in the middle of a debriefing and getting valuable intel here! They really want to drag me out of this just to bitch at me like I’m a kid that didn’t do his homework.” A pause. “Fine! I suppose I should be grateful they didn’t try to nuke the city this time. Though I guess there’s still the possibility of that. Has your team caught the thing yet? What do you mean you lost it?! There’s a giant monster of some kind running loose in the city, and you lost it? No, I don’t want to hear your excuses! Just find it! No, I don’t have any idea where we can put it! Give it to the zoo or something! I don’t care, so long as it’s off the streets!”

He terminated the call so angrily that Jane was amazed he didn’t crack the screen and glared at them both. “I will be back for more answers.”

He got up and swept out of the apartment before even Loki could respond to that. Then again, he was probably careful about opening his mouth while the truth potion was still in effect. Speaking of which…

“How long does that potion last exactly? You said a day, but is that 24 hours exactly, or is that a rough estimate on how long it takes to be metabolised and varies from person to person?”

“It should wear off about the same time of day, so this will last until early afternoon. I hope you will understand delaying our departure further until the effects have passed. We would have to travel to find the secret path we need to take and I have no desire to subject myself to further curiosity until it has fully worn off.”

“I understand. I wouldn’t want to have to talk to people either in those circumstances. I’m kinda sorry I got you into this now.”

“Don’t be. He would have killed me otherwise, and death is somewhat more permanent.”

“So, you guys are definitely going then?” Jane jumped. She’d forgotten Darcy was even there. “Yeah, I mean I really want to see what’s out there. I’ve dedicated my life to studying the universe, but there are too many limitations on me here.”

“Are you guys not gonna go back to Asgard then?”

Loki raised an eyebrow, perplexed. “Why in all the realms would I wish to return?”

“Well, I dunno. But Thor is dead, and nobody has mentioned any other brothers or sisters, and Odin’s pretty old, right? So doesn’t he need an heir or whatever?” They both looked at her blankly. “Don’t look at me like that! I’m a political science major! I might not know what a wormhole is, but I know how a monarchy works and that a power vacuum is a really really bad idea.”

Loki shrugged. “Odin made it very clear that I was never to return to Asgard. I have no idea what he intends to do in regards to the perpetuation of his line. I doubt he intends to marry again, and even if he were to do so, he is indeed old, and there is no guarantee an heir would be produced and grow to maturity in time to take over. Adoption is probably his best option, though it has not worked out too well for him so far.” He smiled wryly, then sighed. “Really, there is no point in me concerning myself about it, as there is nothing I can do to affect matters unless I walk in and stake a claim, but I do not have the necessary support to take power without causing more bloodshed than leaving things alone may risk. All I can really do is watch and hope that things work out for the best.”

Jane had no response to that, so reached over and squeezed his arm reassuringly. Seeing a smear of dust on her sleeve reminded her of her filthy state and she looked down at herself, wrinkling her nose in disgust. “Ugh, I really need to change clothes.”

“What even happened to you to get that filthy?”

“Loki’s room hadn’t been cleaned in a while, I guess they weren’t expecting him back there,” she tossed over her shoulder as she headed in the direction of the bedroom. A shower would be a good idea too, she thought, grabbing some new clothes. Not like they were in a hurry to leave, and who knows if where they went next would have hot running water.

*******************************************************************

She emerged to find them both watching _How to Train Your Dragon_ ; Loki was looking sceptical (probably at the inaccurate portrayal of either Vikings or dragons) but seemed to be enjoying himself anyway. Walking over to join them, she brushed against the desk and a piece of paper fluttered to the floor. Picking it up, she saw it was the note she’d left. She winced, guiltily. It had seemed like a good idea at the time, when they were on their way out of the door and she wanted to be off the planet before her involvement became public knowledge and SHIELD arrived, and she had no idea what to even say, or how to say it in a brief phone call in a way that wouldn’t worry her mom more than no call at all. Deep down, maybe she was worried she’d chicken out and stay. 

Well, her excuses were pretty useless now. SHIELD and Asgard had been and gone, the media knew who she was, and she couldn’t say she was in a hurry to leave. She just had to ask herself, was she sure she wanted to do this? _Yes_ , she thought immediately. _If I let any fears of the unknown win then I’ll regret it for the rest of my life_.

With new resolve, she picked up the phone, still with no real idea what to say, but confident that she was not going to let her mom’s inevitable worries hold her back. So it was incredibly frustrating that there was no answer and her call went straight to voicemail. Come on, really?! She’d known her mom had announced she’d planned to totally unplug and avoid all news, but surely she’d have heard that London had been attacked somehow and started paying attention to the news and turning her phone on so Jane could call if something had happened? Well, no-one could say Jane hadn’t tried.

It looked like it was back to pen and paper again, though this time she could at least give a thorough explanation. She pulled a sheet of paper out the printer and set about composing a letter that conveyed all that had happened in the last 2 years, and how sorry she was for never saying anything before, and how she wished she could give a proper goodbye.

She was so engrossed in the letter that she didn’t realise that Loki was sitting next to her until she’d finished, and jumped when she looked up and noticed him.

“Apologies. I did not wish to disturb you.”

“It’s OK, I guess I was pretty distracted. Not enjoying the film?”

“It finished a few minutes ago. Miss Lewis offered to put something else on, but I declined.”

“Huh, I didn’t realise I was taking that long.” She looked at the clock. Just after noon. “It can’t be much longer until that potion wears off.”

“It cannot come soon enough,” he said, looking down at his hands with disgust.

She reached out to grasp one of his hands and squeezed it. “Hey, I’ve told you, you look fine like this.” He stared at her disbelievingly. “I know, I know. You’ve been fed this line for so long that it’s immutable fact for you, but I refuse to let them win.”

She traced one of the lines swirling across his cheek with a finger, and felt him shiver beneath her touch. She reached his collar and stopped.

“Do these go all over?”

“They do.” He looked uncomfortable at discussing his body, and she felt a fresh wave of anger at the way he’d been brought up. Had they expected him to never find out, or planned to tell him one day and assumed he would just be OK with it?

“Come on.” She stood up, pulling him up with her, and led him into the bedroom, pointedly ignoring Darcy’s knowing look. She wasn’t normally too comfortable with taking the lead like this, but he really didn’t seem to believe her however many times she said she didn’t see him as a monster, so maybe it’s time she proved she wasn’t disgusted by him.

Pushing him down on the bed, she began stripping him out of the seemingly endless layers of clothing, doing herself no favours in her efforts by trying to kiss him as she did so. His attempts to assist her hindered her as much as helped, as their arms tangled and got in each other’s way. When she eventually had him stripped to the waist she pushed him back and nudged him further onto the bed until he was lying flat out beneath her. Straddling him, she removed her own shirt and untied the scarf he’d given her on Asgard, before leaning down and tracing along the lines swirling over his chest with her tongue, making her way down his body. Reaching the top of his pants, she squeezed him through the leather, making him groan and push his hips up, moving into the contact. She started pulling at the lacing, eager for the prize within, when suddenly she felt his hands grasping her shoulders, tugging her up. Taking the hint, she moved up his body, bracing her arms either side of him to lift herself up so she could look him in the face. He was flushed, and his pupils were blown, but he was gasping in a way that seemed more fearful than passionate.

“Stop. I can’t do this. Please.”

Hearing the panic in his voice, she ignored the hurt she felt at the rejection. “You don’t want me?”

He shook his head, quickly, as if trying to dislodge something. “No! Nothing like that! I want you more than anything, but… not right now. I know you say this doesn’t matter to you, and you clearly mean it, which amazes me, but it disgusts me to look like this, and my skin crawls at the thought of you touching this.” He waved an arm at himself. “It almost physically hurts to push you away, but I just… can’t.” He pulled her down against him and buried his face in her neck.

“Shh. It’s OK. I really wish you could see yourself the way I see you, but I get that’s not something I can make go away just like that.” She stroked his hair soothingly. “One day I hope I’ll get you to see yourself as a person and not a monster, but I understand that day is not today.”

She was still determined to prove to him that she was attracted to him even like this, but it wasn’t really fair to push him when he had no way of hiding behind his Asgardian appearance if he wanted to, and was bereft of his usual defence mechanism of misdirection. Another time then, when he’d had more chance to come to terms with what he was. Besides, it was just was well they waited, really. Much as it’d be nice to have someone being perfectly honest in bed, not only was it was unfair to him, it had a high risk of turning out badly for her. Loki had to have a lot of experience, and while she was realistic enough to understand that probably some of those partners were better in bed than her, she really didn’t think her ego could take hearing Loki blurting out, “This is the 15th best sex I have ever had!”

She sank down onto the bed next to him, and he rolled over slightly to face her, though he seemed reluctant to meet her gaze, apparently feeling embarrassed at letting his lack of confidence overwhelm him.

She placed a hand on his chest. “Hey. I meant what I said – it’s OK. I’m fine with waiting, and it’s not right to push you to do something you don’t want.”

She wanted to run her fingers along the patterns on his skin, but it seemed mean to do so right after he’d admitted how uncomfortable he was, so she settled for just running her hands over his skin, with no real focus on the swirls. He still tensed up, however, so she stopped, reluctantly.

“I guess we’d better get dressed and go back out there,” she sighed, getting up and retrieving her shirt from where she’d thrown it, and retying the scarf around her neck. Loki took longer to get dressed, and she watched him, feeling somehow guilty for doing so, as if even that might make him uncomfortable.

If Darcy was surprised by how little time they’d been gone for, she didn’t show any sign of it, and didn’t ask any questions as they sat next to her on the couch. Jane was relieved; it wasn’t like Darcy would judge them for not going through with it, but she didn’t want to have to talk about Loki’s insecurities and she doubted Loki did either. Darcy was watching some cookery show or other and they watched it in silence for a while.

“That pie looks awesome. I am totally gonna try making it. Or maybe get Ian to make it.”

“I’m sure it’ll be great. If you try it here, try not to burn the place down.”

“Hey! I resent those aspersions you are casting upon my culinary skills! I can totally cook! I just don’t usually choose to.” She leaned forward to look past Jane to Loki. “C’mon, man! Back me up here – you really liked those pancakes I made, right?”

He shrugged wit obviously-feigned nonchalance. “They were adequate.” Then he frowned, before his eyes widened with shock. “That was not entirely truthful.”

He looked down at himself and seemed to concentrate, and after a few moments the blueness faded from his skin. He held his hands up in front of his face, wriggling his fingers and grinning. Even though there was a stab of sadness at the reason behind his happiness, his smile was breathtaking, and the obvious delight was catching and she couldn’t help responding with one of her own, before leaning over and kissing him. His hands moved to her back, holding her to him.

Darcy seemed to agree. “Hey, a smile is a good look for you. Should do that more often. The angsty look is pretty cool, but kinda overrated.”

They broke apart, Jane slightly embarrassed. “We should go, I guess, before Fury comes back, or someone else shows up. Are there any more guys with one eye around who want a chance to yell at us?”

Loki laughed. She was really liking this lighter, more playful Loki; she was determined not to let him retreat back into his shell again and cover this laughter with an aloof exterior.

He rose, pulling her up with him, and together they walked over to where she had left her bag, Darcy following them, twisting her hands nervously. Hefting it to her shoulder, she turned to her intern.

“So, I guess this is goodbye… I mean, not forever, right…?” She twisted slightly to look at Loki.

“Nay, I see no reason why we cannot make occasional visits, and I’m sure you will wish to return to your home at some point.”

“Good. I expect some awesome stories, you hear me! And get plenty of photos of weird stuff, and find a way of sonicing your phone so you can have the best Instagram ever!” She embraced Jane in a bonecrushing hug, repeating it with Loki (much to his surprise) and then stepped back and made shooing motions with her hands. “Now get out of here, you two, before Fury shows up and tries to bill you for the damage somehow.”

“Let us go.” He held out his arm to her, bowing slightly, and she clutched his elbow and let him lead her out the door.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \- Sorry if you were hoping for smut there. It just wasn't working & ended up turning into angst. Ooops!
> 
> \- The explanation for Infinity Gems is based on the Collector's little monologue in _Guardians of the Galaxy_ (Which is totally amazing  & you should see it if you haven't already! Hell, even if you have seen it, see it again! :D). No idea what the comicsverse origin is, but that's clearly the MCU explanation, so I'm going with it.
> 
> \- The sonicing that Darcy suggests Jane do to her phone is a _Doctor Who_ reference, for those that don't know. The Doctor has a habit of tweaking his companions' phones using his sonic screwdriver so they work anywhere in the universe.


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Woo! Yes! This is it! It's been fun, & thank you for reading!
> 
> POSSIBLE MINOR SPOILERS FOR _GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY_!
> 
> Nothing major, but part of this chapter includes an alternate version of the Aether handover mid credits scene, & I filled the scene in with extra information gleaned from the Collector's appearance in GotG, including the slightly different selection of specimens (which involved some interesting cameos if you were looking closely) he has that weren't in the TDW sequence, & information about the area his collection is based in, which is a key location in the film. Nothing major is given away, but it's possible you can maybe infer things from some of the references I've included, so if you haven't seen it yet (WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR?!) & want to see it totally fresh, you may want to hold off on reading this.

Jane lay on her back on the bed, looking up at the ceiling of her bunk in wonder. Visually, it wasn’t that interesting as ceilings went – it was a dull grey metal and so low that her head brushed against it when she sat upright – but it was a ceiling on a space ship! An actual space ship! She was in space right now! The room they were in didn’t have windows, but if she wanted, she could go out into the hallway, walk along a little way, and peer out of a viewport at stars. She shivered with excitement.

There was a grunt from beside her. “Ugh. I swear I shall return you to Midgard if you do not cease this fidgeting.”

She smirked at him, though he couldn’t see as his face was pressed into the pillow. “No you won’t.”

She snuggled even closer to him, not that she could do otherwise in the narrow confines of the bunk – it wasn’t the most luxurious accommodation, but beggars can’t be choosers.

Loki hadn’t been kidding when he’d said it’d be a long journey to get to the path that’d take them off Earth, and it’d been late night by the time they’d arrived at a seemingly random spot that Loki insisted was a gateway to another world. Funnily enough it had been between platforms at a railway station, though not Kings Cross, or even in London. She’d been disappointed when she saw that the world on the other side was the familiar dead landscape of Svartalfheim and instead of a nice warm bed for the night she’d been longing for, there’d been a small crevasse between some rocks, where she’d managed a few hours rest on the uneven ground before they set off at dawn marching across the landscape with some unknown destination in mind (she hadn’t even bothered to ask, assuming that it was another portal). Her feet had become too tired to take another step by noon, and he was carrying her on his back when she sensed something in the air. He must have felt her tense, as he looked over his shoulder at her and nodded. She’d hoped that he would bypass the power that she knew far too well, but to her dismay he’d made a beeline for it. Letting her down at what she had hoped was a safe distance from the swirling cloud of Aether that was creeping out from a hole in a destroyed Elven ship, he had approached carefully, pulling a glass jar with an ornate lid from seemingly nowhere, and somehow pulled the Aether inside it, closing the lid and sealing it inside, before stashing it in his secret storage space that defied all the laws of physics. It had occurred to her then that he’d avoided mentioning the Aether’s fate to Fury, and this was probably why; he didn’t trust SHIELD with it.

When she saw their abandoned boat over the next hill, her first reaction had been relief – no more walking! – before it had occurred to her that this meant they had passed the site of Thor’s death. Looking back, she’d been tempted to ask Loki if they could stop for a while and pay respects, but had stifled her words – she didn’t know how far they had to travel or how frequent those storms were.

From there, they’d taken the boat and set off in once again a seemingly-random direction, before Loki had driven the boat at full speed towards a cliff face. Before she had even had a chance to scream at him, they were through the rock, and somewhere very different. She’d been so distracted by the sky (it had been purple, and she’d stared up at it trying to work out the likely components of the atmosphere) Loki had had to drag her out of her thoughts and out of the boat, which they’d left where it was, and out across the rocky landscape until they’d reached a spaceport of some kind. They’d walked around for a while past various ships in a huge variety of shapes and sizes, Loki having to pull her close to him to stop her walking into things, so busy looking around her trying to everything in. She had no idea what he was looking for, but eventually he stopped before a ship that reminded her of a bulkier, blockier version of the ship from Firefly, with a trio of humanoid aliens covered in mottled green fur and asked questions she hadn’t even heard, so distracted by the ship. She’d come out of her reverie in time to see Loki clasping hands with one of the aliens, and handing over a glowing gem of some kind.

That had been a few days ago now. Since then they’d spent a lot of time sleeping, or reading some of the books Loki had brought with him. She was desperate to talk to the crew and ask them all sorts of questions, but she wasn’t too good at interacting with other humans, let alone aliens, and was worried she’d say something horribly offensive to them that’d get her and Loki thrown off the ship, or if it was a good idea to get chatty with them, so she took her cues from Loki and simply nodded politely when she encountered one at the food dispensing machine (which she longed to examine, but taking apart the machine that gave them food would probably be frowned upon).

Her thoughts were interrupted by one of the crew sticking her head through the doorway and announcing that they had arrived.

*******************************************************************

“So where are we?” she asked, looking around. The place vaguely reminded her of _Bladerunner_ ; lots of shops, market stalls and food vendors that all looked run-down, but with flashing screens and lights everywhere. All around them were a huge variety of alien races, adorned in a vast array of weird and wonderful fashions, and talking in what she knew were a huge variety of languages, yet she could understand all the snatches of conversation she could hear.

“Knowhere.”

“Oh come on! I’m already here! It’s a bit silly to be cagey about telling me the name of the place!”

He sighed and looked down at her. “No, that’s its name. It is a mining colony, though the things it mines are illegal to trade, and that combined with its location on the edge of the universe attracts outlaws to work here, which in turn attracts more outlaws who seek shelter here for they know they will find like minds. So keep an eye to your belongings, and do not look for law enforcement to protect you, as there are no laws here to enforce.”

“So what are we even doing here? I don’t want to sound ungrateful, but I expected something a little more… law-abiding.” She stepped carefully over a puddle of some viscous yellow substance, grimacing.

He pulled her closer to him, acting to all around as if he was whispering sweet nothings into her ear. It was awkward to walk like that, but it seemed he did not want to be overheard. “In order to travel the universe we require currency. Bartering a trinket is all well and good for buying passage on a short journey, but is no way of getting about in the long term, and most would prefer cash over goods, as it is more convenient and both parties know its value. So, we need money, and preferably plenty of it so we don’t have to worry about running out, at least for a while.”

“And we can get some here? Just like that?” Considering his earlier comment about the lack of laws, and his odd sense of morality, she had a bad feeling on what he might mean…

“Yes and no. We can get some here, and legally, though there is more to getting it than ‘just like that’. The man who runs this place - insofar as anyone does anyway - is a collector of rare things, and rich enough to pay handsomely to acquire new items, if they are rare and interesting enough. And Infinity Stones are rare and interesting indeed.”

“You’re going to sell the Aether?!” She just in time remembered to keep her voice low. “I thought you were retrieving it for safekeeping?”

“I was. The Collector will keep it safe, and certainly not hand it over to Thanos. What kind of collector gives away items from his collection? I would rather keep an eye on it myself, yes, but it is easily both the most valuable item in my possession, and the thing I am least attached to. There is always the Casket of Ancient Winters, but that would be worth less, and for some reason I find myself unwilling to part from it, maybe because in a way it belongs to me by right, even if I would give anything not to have that right.”

He turned a corner and knocked on a door. After a minute or so it was answered by a woman with bright pink skin wearing a short white dress. Jane tried not to stare, but it was strange – other than the pink skin and the raised markings on her cheeks, she looked so human, and the contrast was somehow weirder than the furry aliens who’d given them a ride here. The woman bowed her head slightly at them in greeting, either ignoring or not noticing Jane’s staring.

“Welcome, strangers. I am Carina. What is your business here?”

“I have something your master will be interested in; an Infinity Stone.”

She bowed her head again. “I shall inform him of your business. Please, wait around this area, and I will summon you when he is ready to see you.”

Loki nodded, and after making another bow, complete with elaborate hand gesture, the girl closed the door.

“How long will it take for him to be ready?” she asked, as they walked back down the street a little way and sat down on an upturned container of some kind that seemed to be in use as a bench.

“As long as he feels like making us wait for. He can see us immediately, but letting us stew for a while asserts his power over us.”

For a while Jane enjoyed watching the variety of aliens walk by, and the glimpses she could see of what was going on in nearby buildings. One seemed to be a casino of some kind, with a crowd of people gathered round a table, placing bets and yelling in happiness or frustration, though she couldn’t see what the game was. Eventually sitting still for so long with nothing to occupy herself with started to get to her. She pulled out her phone and snapped a few photos, because there was just so much to look at, and she couldn’t process it all at once. Besides, Darcy had begged her to take photos. Automatically she opened up Instagram to post some of the photos, before remembering she was on another planet and there was no handy portal this time. So much for that then; Darcy would just have to wait. Probably just as well – she was far too attached to the device.

She turned to Loki, who was also eyeing the people passing (though she suspected it was more out of wariness than wonder) and jokingly asked, “I don’t suppose there’s some spell that’ll let me use my phone, huh?” She grinned, not expecting an answer.

“Of course.”

“Yeah I fig- wait, what?! There is some kind of minor spell of cellphone reception or something?”

“Indeed. Or to be more precise, there is a spell that will facilitate and boost communications and signals, and is easily adaptable to your device.” He motioned for her to hand the phone over, and she did, watching curiously as he examined it for a short time, before clasping his hands around it and concentrating. The phone glowed for several moments, before it faded, and Loki relaxed and unclasped his hands.

“Here.” He handed it back to her.

She swiped on the screen to unlock it, sceptical that he could do what he claimed. It didn’t look any different. But she suddenly had full bars and the wi-fi symbol had shown up.  
She tried sending a text message to Darcy. _“On an alien planet on the edge of the universe! :)”_

Darcy never being far from her phone, it didn’t surprise her when she got a reply only a few seconds later. _“pics or it didn’t happen”_

She attached one of the photos she’d just taken. _“Good enough?”_

_“omg I hate u”_

Figuring she should try accessing the internet, she opened up her browser and went to the Reddit thread she’d posted to see what the replies were like, Loki peering down at the screen from next to her, trying to hide his curiosity behind a veneer of aloofness.

The most upvoted comment was: _is loki with you? is it true he had sex with a horse?_

She grinned up at him sheepishly, quickly closing the page. “Erm sorry! Welcome to the internet I guess.”

He frowned, but before he could spit out a no-doubt acidic comment on mortals who knew nothing, he straightened and turned, his attention caught by something. Looking up, she followed his gaze to see Carina standing in the doorway beckoning them. They got to their feet and hurried over. Or rather Jane hurried. Loki moved quickly enough, but in a relaxed manner that made it appear that he was taking his time. He obviously did not appreciate the show of dominance.

Stepping into the entrance was like walking through another portal to yet another world, so different was it to what was outside. The outside had been fairly grim, but they’d covered it up with bright lights, and movement and noise and life. Inside was a different matter. The light was brighter and warmer than the harsh neons and screens, but somehow muted and sickly, and the only sounds were distant hissing and bubbling. Instead of the eclectic alien crowd bustling around, there were glass cases stood all around containing all sorts of creatures that at first she thought were preserved. Her unease rose when she saw some of them moving, and realised that they were in fact alive and imprisoned.

She shuddered. “This is all kinds of creepy.”

She paused at one case, where a Labrador in a Soviet spacesuit cocked its head and whimpered at her, when she felt Loki pressing against her, as if he was backing away from something. She turned to see what had penetrated his calm, and saw an ugly grey alien in the opposite case. She’d seen photos of ones just like it on news reports.

“Is that…?” she began.

“A Chitauri? Yes.” He shuddered and hastened past, pulling her with him. Maybe it was her imagination, as the creature’s face didn’t seem designed to register emotion, but she could swear it looked after them with hate.

They continued on down the corridor, keeping her eyes fixed on Carina’s rigid, puppet-like movements ahead of them, trying not to look to either side in case she met the gaze of any creatures within, either hateful or despairing. She was so focused on the woman in front of her she almost ran into her when she stopped and turned, bowing slightly and theatrically indicating a man standing in the open area they’d just walked into, like a spider lurking at the centre of a web.

“I present to you, Taneleer Tivan, the Collector.” She sidestepped gracefully away to stand by her master’s side, hands clasped together in front of her and elbows bent.

Her first impression was ‘down on his luck Vegas magician’, with his furry cape, white gloves and spiked hair. He bowed at them, but it felt as insincere at the servant girl’s had been stiff and puppet-like.

“Ooh! Oh! An Asgardian! And a Terran too! Such an… odd pair. It’s an honour.”

He made her skin crawl, and she didn’t buy his act for a moment, but she reminded herself that Loki would know better than to fall for a show of friendliness that didn’t even fool her, and made the mistake of looking around.

Glaring down haughtily at her from a case just beyond the Collector, was a Dark Elf. She froze for a moment, terrified it would somehow know them and how they defeated his people, but reminded herself that he couldn’t know about it from here, and he was trapped in a box anyway. She caught sight of the next case and was even more horrified. Another pink woman, wearing a white dress exactly like Carina’s, with wires fixed to her head. She looked back down at the servant girl in front of her, and saw for the first time the fear beneath her posture. Was that her eventual fate if she displeased her master? Or her replacement?

Tearing her attention away from the implications, she focused back on the conversation.

“I have something you might want; an Infinity Stone. I am sure a man such as yourself who collects rare wonders would desire one most keenly.” He swirled his hands, and the jar containing the Aether appeared between them, its light blazing through the glass and casting a dim glow on the four of them. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the Dark Elf pressing against the glass of his case. _Sorry, man. You had it and you lost it._

“Of course. But… if I may ask… why not keep it for yourself?” He spoke slowly and ponderously, with random pauses, as if he was trying to do a William Shatner impression but hadn’t got the hang of the speed part.

“It is not for me; I have no use of it,” Loki sneered dismissively. Then he shrugged. “Of course, if you do not want it, then that is fair enough…” He made to turn around.

“Ah! Let us not be too hasty. I merely… enquire as to whether you are serious in your desire to give this into my keeping.”

“Sell, not give. I may not want it, but that does not mean I would discard it so easily.”

The Collector nodded low in an almost-bow. “Very well.” He drew one of his gloved fingers along a nearby table, as if checking for dust; Jane noticed Carina’s eyes going wide with fear and briefly flickering to one side as if seeking out her predecessor/replacement/whatever. “I offer you 3 billion units for it.”

It sounded like a lot to Jane, and it took all her self control not to gasp, but Loki was derisive. “Are you trying to insult me? 10 billion, and no less.” The Collector narrowed his eyes and seemed about to object. “Of course, if you do not want it that badly, I am sure there are others who will buy the trinket.”

He made to swirl his arms to send the Aether back into his pocket dimension and the Collector stepped forward and raised a hand to forestall it, apparently without realising, as he stopped himself and made efforts to check himself.

“9 billion… and that is my final offer.”

Loki tilted his head to one side, as if thinking carefully, even though Jane knew damn well that he’d made up his mind whether or not to accept before the guy had finished speaking (dammit though, ice ages could come and go in the time it took him to say good morning). “Very well, I suppose that is sufficient,” he said in the manner of someone making a major concession.

“Very well.” The thin veneer of friendliness was even thinner now, and his movements as he stalked to the table nearby were even stiffer than those of his servant, who watched him nervously. He opened a drawer and pulled out several bundles. Loki handed the Aether over to her, as Tivan counted the cash into his hands. The man then held his hands out, and she handed the box to him, while Loki stashed the cash away in his inter-dimensional storage space.

Turning to leave, Loki paused and looked back at him. “I would be cautious, though I’m sure you know this; there are many who would wish to possess this who most certainly should not.”

He clutched the jar close to his chest like he was worried Loki would snatch it back. “I can assure you, it will be… absolutely safe, here… in my collection.” He bowed, though it was definitely shallower than before.

Loki merely nodded and turned away; Jane following close behind, scared she would end up in one of the cases if she lingered.

She took several deep, gasping breaths as soon as they emerged outside, relieved it was over. She hadn’t realised how claustrophobic the atmosphere inside had been until they were free of it. Loki led her over to the bench they’d been sitting on before, sitting them both down and rubbing her back soothingly.

“It is a rather disturbing place, but we are out now, and all is well, my Jane.” He kissed the top of her head.

Calmer now, she sat up, but remained leaning against him, still needing the reassurance he offered. “Would you really have walked if he didn’t pay enough?”

“If necessary. Even that initial offer of 2 billion would have been enough to manage quite comfortably, but this is our only opportunity to gather currency other than putting ourselves to work, so I wished to get as much as I could, and I found I was not in the mood to haggle and quibble over the price in minute increments. I knew he wanted it too much to turn it down, so I trusted that he would not call my bluff. And even if he had, there are others – smaller collectors, benign and principled rulers who would pay anything for it to avoid it falling into the hands of their enemies… It would have been inconvenient, as we’d have to find ways to travel to any of those places with the limited resources I have to barter, and would need to hope that we found a buyer quickly, but it would have been manageable. And he did not know how limited our resources are, so the threat was less idle for him.”

More alert now, she looked around at the street. It seemed to be even more crowded now, but she didn’t know enough about the place to guess why.

“So, now that we have all this money to do whatever we want with, what _are_ we going to do?”

“Our first order of business I think is to purchase a suitable ship, and stock it with supplies; if we even need to spend all our money on that to obtain something sufficient, it will be worth it – it will be our transport and residence, and we can use it to carry cargo to earn money should we run out of what we have. After that…” he shrugged. “We go wherever the mood takes us.”

“Can you actually fly a ship?”

“Of course!” He looked slighted. Then something seemed to occur to him and he smirked. “You know, with this place being so unusual, and on the edge of the universe, there is a team of scientists studying it…”

He’d found exactly the right thing to perk her up fully. “There are people here with scientific knowledge about the edge of the universe?! Where?” She jumped up, ready to hare off the moment she had a direction to follow. Realising he was still sitting, and holding one of her wrists so she couldn’t run off, she glared down at him. “Come on, Loki! Don’t be a jerk!”

He chuckled, finally getting to his feet. “Very well. We shall see the scientists before we go. But we are obtaining a ship first. As fascinating as this place is, it is a lawless hellhole as much as it is a sanctuary, and it is wise to have an escape route planned, especially if you are on the run to start with, as we are.”

“Fine! Fine! So let’s go get a ship then!” She began pulling him after her down the street.

He laughed. “I commend your enthusiasm, but I’m afraid the dockyards are the other way.” He stepped forward and looped his arm through hers, before turning and steering her in another direction. “Come. Let us buy ourselves a ship and do your science!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \- Yes, there is indeed a Dark Elf & a chitauri in the Collector's collection, if you didn't spot them. The chitauri is blink-&-you'll miss, & the Dark Elf is visible at three points, but still easy to miss if you're not looking.
> 
> \- Loki really does have a minor spell of cellphone reception. Seriously. See _Agent of Asgard_.


End file.
